THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


WAR    AND    WORSHIP; 

A  POEM, 


BY 

HENRY  BEDLOW. 


CONVICTIONS  BASED  ON  RECOLLECTIONS  OF  THE  REVOLTS  or  1848. 

While  the  officers  attached  to  the  expedition 
under  the  command  of  Lieut.  W.  F.  Lynch  were 
camped  at  Ain-Jiddy  (En  Gedi)  on  the  shores  of 
the  Dead  Sea,  a  messenger  from  Jerusalem  brought 
tidings  of  the  revolutionary  state  of  Europe  and  the 
spirit  of  "Popular  Rule"  animating  all  parties 
arrayed  against  the  dominant  powers.  The  fol 
lowing  verses  were  suggested  at  the  time  and  place 
above  mentioned,  roughly  sketched  in  Syria,  and 
completed  in  Palestine  and  New  York. 

HENRY  BEDLOW. 


NEW   YORK: 

THE   TRUTH  SEEKER  COMPANY, 
igoz. 


PS 


WAR    AND   WORSHIP. 


I. 


'Mid  palms  and  cacti  bivouacked, 

Reclused  from  worldly  cark  and  care, 
A  din  of  conflict  freights  the  air, 

And  cloistral  calm  with  tumult  racked. 

Clairaudient  in  my  solitude, 
Yet  dubious  if  the  stir  proclaim 
A  strife  in  Freedom's  cherished  name, 

Or  mock  heroics  of  a  feud  ; 

Some  factious  brawl,  corrupt  in  deed ; 
A  demagogic  enterprise, 
To  cozen,  dupe  and  victimize 

The  purblind  gulls  of  others'  greed  ; 


626018 


Its  hurly-burly  warlike  made, 

With  cannon  roar  and  clarion  ring, 
And  yet  a  ruffian  ranting  thing, 

A  brawling  mob's  fanfaronade  ; 

Or  rallying  slogan,  wild  huzza, 

Rude  shock  of  armies,  hissing  bombs, 
The  carbine-clatter,  roll  of  drums, 

The  maddening,  murderous  coil  of  war ; 

Its  'larums  weird,  its  frenzied  shrieks 
Of  women  in  sacked  cities,  when 
The  red  streets  clogged  with  armed  men, 

But  dead — each  finding  him  she  seeks. 

And  clairvoyant,  do  I  behold 
A  vision  of  portentous  scope, 
All  serfdom  marshalling  to  cope 

With  despotisms  manifold  ? 

A  fond  prophetic  sight  that  sees 
The  bonds  of  slave  and  villeinage, 
Rent  in  the  stress  of  manhood's  rage : 

The  doom  of  old  feudalities  ? 


II. 


Will  Freedom  once  more  count  her  gains  ? 
Will  outraged  masses  heed  her  calls, 
And,  firm  of  purpose,  rend  the  thralls 

And  fetters  of  a  race  in  chains  ? 

Can  this  be  riff-raff  hate  of  Law  ? 

Or  slavery  so  debased  the  man 

That  bugle-blast  and  rataplan 
Signal  for  Riot,  not  for  War  ? 

Or,  feudatory  forces  spent, 

Do  serfs  behold  with  ravished  eyes 
The  light  of  Freedom's  dawn,  and  rise 

Rejoicing  in  the  glad  portent  ? 

Or  see  with  slumbrous  gaze  the  gleams, 
To  take  the  sluggard's  drowsy  view, 
And,  folding  arms,  turn  to  renew 

The  sorc'ry  of  beguiling  dreams  ? 

5 


Has  alien  rule  their  souls  debauched, 
Accepting  fate,  nor  wroth  nor  shamed, 
Where  unmarred  manhood  would  have  flamed 

Like  rick  and  harvest  riot-torched  ? 

As  if  the  war-drum's  loud  alarms, 
Its  rhythmic  throb  and  wild  tattoo, 
Were  but  a  mirthful  mob's  halloo, 

And  not  a  fervid  call  to  arms  ? 


III. 


Resigned  to  darkness,  will  they  cast 
Their  blinkard-eyes  on  light  and  rail, 
Or,  roused  to  loftier  aims,  prevail 

Against  the  slave's  ignoble  past  ? 

Frenzied  with  Power's  long  abuse, 
The  doors  of  mercy  on  them  shut, 
Do  they  arise  resolved  to  put 

Their  helot  thews  to  Freedom's  use  ? 


Seeing  her  dayspring  rout  the  gloom, 
And  all  their  wrongs,  as  phantoms  dire, 
Fleeing  like  herds  from  prairie  fire, 

To  perish  in  predestined  doom  ; 

They  whom  an  empire,  ruthless  strong, 
By  tithe  and  tax  and  wanton  wars, 
To  outrage,  spoil  and  greed,  no  pause, 

Have  maddened  with  inhuman  wrong, 

To  whom  the  hate  of  despot  brings 
Revolt  to  break  their  galling  chain, 
And  summons  manhood  back  again, 

Ere  throttled  in  the  clutch  of  kings  ; 

Awaiting  not  the  law's  repeal, 

Which  might  a  milder  sway  ordain, 
But  steeled  no  longer  to  remain 

Coerced,  beneath  the  iron  heel, 

Have  now  submission's  limits  reached, 
And  slave,  transfigured  to  the  Man, 
Make  Insurrection  lead  their  van, 

Marching  with  Havoc's  hounds  unleashed, 

7 


In  undrilled  Riot's  huddled  strife, 

Where  License  reigns,  and  Law  is  dumb, 
And  individual  rights  succumb 

With  equities  of  civic  life. 


IV. 

Is  it  a  rascal  rabble-trick  ? 

Is  Freedom's  purpose  festered  thus  ? 

And  this  mere  sputum  and  the  pus 
Of  ulcerous  bodies  politic, 

Corrupt  at  heart  ?  their  aim  to  rob, 
To  roister,  ravage,  loot  and  kill  ; 
Murder,  the  Sergeant  of  their  drill, 

Their  force's  Sovereign  head,  King  Mob  ? 

Who  would  not  have  the  wide  world  free 
From  Absolutism's  reckless  whims  ; 
And  hear  rejoicing  "  Sanctus  "  hymns 

Of  franchised  hosts  to  Liberty  ? 


Loved  Liberty !  man  is  not  loth 
To  own  Semitic  cult  for  thee, 
Thou  threefold  Holy  Deity  ! 

Freemen's  "  Lord  God  of  Sabaoth." 

While  no  base  acts  their  aims  betray, 
This  is  not  venal,  but  doth  wear 
Veridic  Revolution's  air  : 

Let  Freedom  bless  the  bold  essay. 


V. 

She  comes  to  judgment !  Sovereign    Lords, 
Anointed  Kings,  Khedives,  Bashaws, 
Satraps  and  Sultans,  Kaisers,  Tsars, 

Caliphs  and  Khans,  tyrannic  hordes, 

Beneath  whose  rod  of  mastery  pine 
A  world  of  tributary  souls, 
Defenseless  under  loathed  controls, 

Mocking  a  godhead  Right-Divine, 


The  days  of  expiation  dawn  ! 
Retributive  upon  her  throne, 
The  lightnings  belted  at  her  zone, 
Her  straight  brows  trenched  in  righteous  scorn- 
She  sits  ;  her  clear,  imperious  eyes 
Glowing  with  holy  flame,  which  lights 
Oppressive  wrong,  and  thus  invites 
The  verdict  of  her  dread  assize. 

Or,  ranging  through  the  realms,  her  tread 
Startles  old  empires  and  despair, 
Makes  cheeks  of  ruling  tyrants  wear 

The  blenching  of  a  fateful  dread. 


VI. 

Great  mother  of  the  earth's  oppressed, 

To  thy  sole  refuge  turn  for  aid, 

The  wronged,  down-trodden  and  betrayed, 
To  be  of  thy  true-cheer  possessed. 


Then  comes  the  hour,  for  come  it  must, 
When  misrule  bears  such  foul  renown, 
That  sceptre  and  the  triple  crown 

Roll  in  a  world-wide  battle  dust. 

These  are  but  symbols  !  still  through  these 
Have  come  man's  many  woes  and  worst  : 
Both  priest  and  king  have  proved  accurst, 

And  sorrow's  drafts  drank  to  the  lees. 


VII. 

Strange  !  that  laws  judged  by  modern  lights, 
Mere  Custom  based  on  ancient  wrong, 
Should  yet,  maleficent  and  strong, 

Be  chronicled  as  vested  rights ; 

That  Title,  Privilege  and  Caste, 
In  Usurpation's  womb  conceived, 
And  birth  in  violence  achieved, 

Should  rule  us  from  the  barb'rous  past. 


Homage  exacted  as  a  due 

To  an  ancestral  "  What  Has  Been," 
The  enforcement  of  an  ancient  lien 

Upon  the  freedom  of  the  New. 

A  parasitic  vogue  no  less, 

This  servile  sycophantic  fawn 

To  bonded  Midas  ;  trucklings  borne 

To  Title — low-bred  caddishness 

Transmitted  from  past  feudal  days, 
And  now  to  Caste  precedence  trends : 
Such  bent  needs  drastic  purge,  to  cleanse 

Republics  from  Patrician  sways. 


VIII. 

Though  Biblic-gloze  of  slavery  bar 
The  slave's  revolt,  be  not  perplexed  ; 
Presumptuous  priestcraft  forged  the  text 

For  Freedom,  strife  is  Holy  War. 


To  Revolutions  she  has  given 

True  warrant  for  revolt ;  as  though 
An  archangelic  trump  should  blow 

Authoritative  right  from  Heaven. 

Then  as  when  earthquakes  rend  a  realm, 
And  down  through  ravine,  gulch  and  rent, 
Structures  unbased  are  headlong  sent, 

Mountains  arise,  and  floods  o'erwhelm; 

So  when  her  tremors  stir  all  hearts, 

Yawn  gulfs,  from  Right  divorcing  Wrong ; 
Old  tottering  frauds,  not  over-strong, 

Vanish  in  void  ;  Freethought  upstarts. 

Freethought !  strong  utt'rance  !  bold  ideas  ! 
Beneath  whose  firm,  diffusive  strength 
Roll  priestcrafts,  creeds  and  thrones  at  length, 

The  mockery  of  enfranchised  years. 


IX. 


They  wake  a  tumult  in  the  heart, 
These  despots  of  a  life's  brief  hour, 
With  their  fastastic  freaks  of  power, 

Forcing  just  rule  and  right  apart ; 

A  God's  indissoluble  plan 

Dishonored  by  besotted  fools, 
Whose  Saturnalias  of  misrules 

Debauch  the  manhood  of  the  man. 

When  wrong  makes  civic  progress  halt, 
And  man's  rule  null,  'twill  ever  be 
Brought  clear  to  view,  that  he  may  see 

Some  broken  Law  of  God  the  fault  ; 

A  Law  which  cannot  know  divorce 
From  the  God-purpose  it  enfolds. 
Never  to  be  repealed,  it  holds 

Eternally  effective  force. 

14 


A  truth  for  endless  time  enscrolled, 
Results  of  His  disprized  laws, 
Effects,  as  sternly  following  cause, 

Were  Cosmos  back  to  Chaos  rolled. 


On  wrongful  act  amend  will  hinge, 
And  Retribution's  gates  swing  wide, 
For  efflux  of  that  ruthless  tide, 

That  baleful  justice  called  Revenge. 

When  direful  "  Reigns  of  Terror  "  come, 
And  "Right  Divine"  and  "Privilege" 
Pay  bloody  tribute  to  the  rage 

Of  the  aroused,  red-handed  Slum  ; 

Then  Crime  holds  Freedom  as  its  fag, 
While  Riot  masquerades  as  War, 
With  License  in  triumphal  car, 

And  Liberty  a  murderous  hag. 


X. 

Now  hamlet,  town,  and  seething  mart, 
A  Revolution's  force  controls  ; 
The  throbbing  drums  and  carmagnoles, 

Rhythmic  with  passion's  wrathful  heart. 

The  Babeled  streets  are  swarmed,  as  when 
Sounds  the  red  revelry  of  war, 
While  yells  and  cursings,  near  and  far, 

Reveal  the  headlong  rage  of  men. 

A  raucous  clamor  fills  the  air, 
With  hint  of  peril  in  its  ring, 
Harsh,  truculent  and  menacing, 

From  mobs  which  threaten  and  which  dare. 

Discord  by  day  each  region  roams, 
A  nameless  dread  pervades  the  nights, 
Darkness  made  lurid  with  the  lights 

Of  blazing  ricks  and  flaming  homes. 

16 


Men  gaze  with  fierce,  malignant  stare, 
In  every  face  dread  purpose  lies ; 
Mouths  closed  determinedly,  and  eyes 

Spectral  with  hunger  or  despair. 

Children  anaemic,  want-distressed, 
And  haggard  mothers,  carcass-thin, 
Beg  with  a  skull's  horrific  grin, 

As  if  their  deathful  stint  were  jest. 

No  whining  beggar's  sniveled  cant, 
No  cringing  cadger's  feigned  distress, 
But  supplicating  eyes,  express 

Famine's  unutterable  want. 

All  tender  hearts  compassion  wrings, 
For  frenzy  shows  in  varied  ways  ; 
Some  kneel  in  prayer,  or  in  their  craze 

Curse  God,  and  drop  to  die — poor  things 

Scenes  to  bring  tears  and  pale  the  cheek, 
Unless  one's  soul  is  self-immersed, 
Or  with  the  cynic's  nature  cursed, 

And  heart  as  hard  as  Burmah-teak. 


XI. 

The  masses,  fierce  and  malcontent, 
So  long  from  human  rights  estranged, 
Resolve  to  have  subjection  changed 

By  Battle's  grim  arbitrament. 

Where'er  despotic  Force  parades, 

There  stern  opposing  Manhood  stands 
And  women  flout  its  hireling  bands 

From  roofs  and  bristling  barricades. 

Is  this  the  mad,  protesting  shriek 

Of  suffering  peoples,  roused  at  length 
To  action,  measuring  wrathful  strength 

With  that  brute  face  that  kept  them  weak  ? 

Grave  Discontent's  disorder  tends 

To  broader  issues  ;  gathering  throngs, 
Inflamed  by  speech  and  martial  songs, 

Riot  in  Revolution  ends. 

18 


And  thus  aesthetic  form  essays, 

While  crowds  by  swift  accretion  swell, 
With  hostile  forces,  equable, 

And  drilled  in  war's  strategic  ways. 

Kingdoms  by  feud  and  faction  rent, 
From  town  and  village,  vale  and  holt, 
Battalioned  serfdoms  in  revolt, 

These  rustic  legions  supplement. 


XII. 

To  free  their  race  from  slavery's  ban, 
Armies  to  battle-fields  pass  by, 
To  prove  how  Christ-like  men  can  die, 

In  ransom  of  their  brother-man. 

In  sullen  bitterness  with  wrong, 

Instinct  with  freedom's  earnest  bent, 
Souls  with  envenomed  passions  rent, 

With  torrent  purport  speed  along. 

19 


Throughout  the  night  the  stir  is  heard 
Of  tramping  multitudes  ;  nor  ceased 
When  the  vague  dawn-light  in  the  east 

Roused  earliest  chirp  of  waking  bird. 

When  from  the  dusk  evolved  the  day, 
Onward  still  streams  the  human  tide, 
Afar  and  near,  and  spreading  wide 

O'er  fell  and  field  and  dusty  way. 

The  farmer  from  the  half-ploughed  soil, 
The  coulter  in  the  furrow  left, 
The  craftsman  in  his  calling  deft, 

Drudges,  in  coarser  forms  of  toil ; 

From  handicrafts  of  every  turn, 

From  foundry,  stithy,  forge  and  mill, 
From  factory,  furnace,  loom  and  till, 

Come  yeomen,  peasant,  churl  and  kern. 

Trade  quits  its  counter,  clerks  their  desks  ; 
Tailor  on  yardstick  binds  his  shears, 
And  with  him  follow  pikes  and  spears 

Alike  extempored,  war's  grotesques. 


The  weaver  spurns  his  loom  and  thrums, 
To  web  and  shuttle  gives  the  slip, 
Marching  in  martial  fellowship 

With  rabble  from  the  teeming  slums. 

The  miner  hurries  from  the  pit, 

The  smutted  collier  shirks  his  work ; 
The  cook,  with  bold,  belligerent  yerk, 

Unscabbards  from  the  roast,  the  spit. 

Beside  the  stripling,  war-imbued, 

Steps  bookish-scholar,  no  more  bowed  ; 
The  city  bully,  bold  and  loud, 

Now  aptly  in  the  hostile  mood. 

In  labor's  homely  guise  they  come, 
In  all  a  warlike  bent  abounds, 
While  near  and  far-afield  resounds 

The  loud  tantara  of  the  drum. 

With  "  tally  ho  "  some  keep  the  pace, 
As  if  the  game  were  up  and  gone, 
And  cry  of  "yoiks"  and  winding  horn 

Were  a  "tantivy"  to  the  chase. 


21 


XIII. 

The  fields  are  mantled  green  with  May, 
Yet  hosts  which  tramp  above  that  sod, 
Come  not  to  view  the  works  of  God 

In  springtide's  radiant  array — 

But  eyes  with  lurid  glitter  lit, 

With  volleyed  shot,  and  bayonets  fixed, 
Striving,  in  battle-wrangle  mixed, 

To  put  God's  image  under  it. 

With  sons  of  toil  the  hill-scarps  swarm, 
Not  clad  in  gala-dress  of  war, 
But  every  heart  firm  to  the  core, 

And  sombre  as  a  rising  storm. 

The  clamor  of  the  forming  crowd, 
A  muttering  distant  thunder  seems  ; 
Their  eager  bayonets'  restless  gleams, 

The  lightning  of  that  lurid  cloud. 

22 


What  fearlessness  has  Freedom  lent 
To  them,  so  dareful-glad  to  die  ? 
Once  abject  bondsmen,  they  defy 

The  power  that  seemed  omnipotent. 

Though  battle-clang  their  requiem, 
'Tis  life — life  of  the  baited  slave — 
That  holds  more  terror  than  the  grave, 

More  dread  than  sudden  death  to  them. 


XIV. 

Embattled  on  the  vantage-slopes 
Of  the  free  hills,  their  legions  lure 
A  myriad  eyes — the  cynosure 

And  pole-star  of  a  people's  hopes  ; 

There,  like  inexorable  Fates, 
Their  serried  lines  afar  defined  ; 
Rude-weaponed — yet  for  war  aligned, 

Facing  the  foes  that  Freedom  hates  ; 

23 


Their  smelted  ploughshares  wrought  to  guns  : 
When  scythes  as  swords  from  scabbards  leap, 
They  who  have  sown  the  wind  will  reap 

The  whirlwind  !  so  the  adage  runs. 

For  like  a  cloud-burst  these  will  pour 

Their  levy  on  the  hated  foe, 

In  undammed  cataclysmic  flow, 
With  inundating  rush  and  roar. 


XV. 

When  Freedom  like  a  power  divine, 
Turning  the  dew  that  wets  the  plain 
Red  with  the  blood  of  votaries  slain, 

The  water  once  more  changed  to  wine  ; 

The  soil  that  the  libation  quaffs 
Will  ever  be  renowned  for  breed 
Of  valiant  men  and  noble  deed — 

Such  magic  have  her  wizard  drafts. 

24 


From  action  there  is  still  surcease, 

While  on  the  slopes,  which  dew  still  wets, 
Glint,  meteor-like,  the  bayonets, 

Where  Freedom  holds  her  fortalice. 

From  ranks  now  mute  no  sound  is  heard 

Above  the  voices  of  command, 

In  tragic  preparation  stand 
The  columns  which  await  "the  word." 


XVI. 

The  vision  changes  !     On  the  plains 
An  onslaught  rages  fierce  and  fell, 
The  uproar  of  a  dread  pell-mell, 

Where  men  are  fiends,  and  torment  reigns. 

The  sylvan  landscape,  dew  impearled, 
With  nature's  sorrow  seems  tear-wet, 
Veiled  tragedies,  by  sight  unmet, 

In  fire-mist  of  battle  furled. 

25 


The  file-fires  of  the  legions  flash, 

And,  'neath  the  tread  of  hostile  men, 
The  meadows  lie  a  quaggy  fen 

With  wild-flowers  in  a  sodden  plash. 

The  scene  grim  havoc's  home  appears, 

With  shot-ploughed  pastures,  fallowed  leas, 
Torn  woodland  groves,  whose  wounded  trees, 

Weeping  their  hurt,  shed  ambered  tears, 

Blight,  waste  and  ruin,  near  and  far, 

Ravage  and  devastation  dire, 

Soil  swept  as  by  a  prairie  fire  ; 
All  sylvan  charm  dispelled  by  war  ; 

The  vale  and  meadow,  moor  and  heath, 
Stamped  deep  with  desolation's  brand, 
Battle  and  Murder's  Promised  Land, 

A  trysting-place  of  Man,  with  Death  ! 


26 


XVII. 

The  limpid  stream  that  wound  along, 
Melodious  in  its  sinuous  run, 
A  liquid  Memnon,  which  the  sun 

Seemed  to  have  touched  to  endless  song, 

Lies  swamped  throughout  its  placid  bed, 
Pent  up  in  pools  its  minstrel  flow, 
Its  meadow-course  a  dismal  slough, 

Its  ferns  and  mosses  guled  with  red. 

Disks  of  the  daisies,  vermeil-dyed, 

Their  ivoried  rays  now  death-like  white- 
In  dabbled  grass  a  piteous  sight — 

With  paler  dead  lie  side  by  side. 


XVIII. 

The  brazen  tubes  of  bugles  blare, 
And,  like  a  strident  storm  of  steel, 
I  see  the  dragoons  charge,  and  reel 

Before  the  volleying  hollow  square. 

27 


Dense,  serried  ranks  meet  the  assault, 
And  as  when  billows  smite  the  bluff, 
Baffled,  recoil  at  its  rebuff, 

And,  like  spent  force,  collapse  or  halt ; 

They  halt,  retreat,  reform,  recharge ; 

Again  the  deadly  volleys  sound  ; 

The  unhorsed,  bleeding,  strike  the  ground, 
Their  steeds,  unreined,  fly  wild,  at  large. 

A  decimated  force  reforms 

To  breast  that  death-evolving  square, 

And,  in  heroic  frenzy,  dare 
The  blizzards  of  its  leaden  storms. 

With  rowels  dripping  red,  these  ride ; 

Upon  their  saddles  bending  low, 

As  if  saluting  Death,  they  go, 
For  freedom  will  not  be  denied. 


XIX. 

Slain  horses  heaped  in  battle's  stress, 
Serve  "  coignes  of  vantage  "  for  a  few 
To  force  the  foremost  files,  and  hew 

A  pathway  for  the  rearward  press. 

From  mounded  slain  their  horses  span 
The  bristling  space  with  mighty  leaps  ; 
Crushing  the  line  in  mangled  heaps, 

Its  bayonets  goring  horse  and  man. 

The  barrier  yields,  thus  brayed  and  trussed, 
While,  through  the  swirl  of  smoke  and  murk, 
The  sabres  flash  relentless  work, 

Aided  by  pike  and  spear-head  thrust. 

A  stalwart  few  with  hearts  aflame, 
Against  outnumbering  forces  hurled, 
Make  records  that  amaze  the  world — 

Hewing  a  bloody  path  to  fame. 

29 


Like  pioneers  in  wildwoods  free, 

With  score  and  mark  and  boles  laid  low, 
These  through  the  human  jungle  go — 

Blazing  a  road  to  Liberty. 

The  broken  square,  in  wild  melee, 
Engirt  as  by  a  garrot-belt 
Of  pike  and  sabre,  sink  and  melt, 

As  snowflakes  in  a  scrolling  sea. 

Strewed  lie  the  wounded,  heaped  the  slain, 
Within  those  lines  so  torn  and  trenched 
By  battle-bolts,  and  storms  that  drenched 

The  summer  dust  with  purple  rain. 


XX. 

The  loud-lunged  cannon's  seismic  shocks, 
The  hurly-burly  of  the  war, 
By  peaceful  herdsmen  heard  afar 

As  roar  of  seas  on  basalt  rocks  ; 

30 


The  scud  of  battle's  murk  and  rack, 
Sweeping  o'er  fields  to  distant  shires, 
Goads  in  King  Mob  restrained  desires 

For  foray,  plunder,  rape  and  sack. 

Clamor  enhanced  by  stert'rous  lungs, 
By  hoot  and  gibe  and  ribald  shouts, 
By  quip  and  sneer  and  scoffing  flouts, 

A  frenzied  tournament  of  tongues  ; 

The  ring  of  sabres,  helmets  split, 

The  bayonet's  fret  in  struggle  locked  ; 

The  rush,  the  roar,  the  brave  hearts  shocked 

By  death-cries  of  their  comrades,  hit ; 

The  ping  of  bullets,  rifle-sped, 

The  swish  of  balls,  the  screech  of  shells, 
The  savage  dash  and  demon  yells 

Of  ranks  when  they  behold  their  dead  ! 

Impetuous  hoofs  the  earth  affray 
When  reinforcements  hurtle  past, 
And  as  before  the  stormwhirl  blast, 

The  rooted  ranks,  like  forests,  sway. 

31 


Colliding  masses  undulate, 

Embattled  forces  ebb  and  flow, 
Fortune,  perplexed  to  which  side  go, 

Swayed  by  a  vacillating  Fate. 


XXI. 

When  seas,  gale-driven,  raid  the  land, 
Fretting  away  the  beveled  beach, 
Thrust  deltas  in  the  shallow's  reach, 

Spread  out  the  bluffs  as  spongy  sand, 

And  littoral  lines  deflect  their  trend, 
Thus,  in  the  fight's  infuriate  tide, 
When  tragic  multitudes  collide, 

The  files  of  battle  swerve  and  rend, 

Losing  their  rectilinear  form, 

As  foe-ward  rolls  the  raging  coil ; 
And  dead  and  dying  fleck  the  soil, 

As  flotsam  wreck,  tossed  up  by  storm. 

32 


Behold  where  firing-files  have  curved, 
In  coast-line  undulations  bent ; 
Here  looped  in  gulfs,  there  prominent, 

Where  a  bluff  boldness  never  swerved, 

And  all  the  interspaces  wide, 

Hillocked  with  battle's  jetsam,  spread 
In  shapes  of  moribund  and  dead, 

There  left,  as  by  a  reflux  tide  ! 


XXII. 

Down  before  thrust  of  lance  or  pike, 
With  churl  and  clown,  the  noble  goes ; 
Their  blood  in  red  conjunction  flows — 

Sweet  saints  in  heaven  !  they  look  alike  ! 

Pity  from  human  hearts  has  fled, 

While  uncloyed  rage  takes  brutal  shapes, 
And,  as  the  wine-press  crushes  grapes, 

Behold  the  vintage  of  the  dead  ! 

33 


Red  in  the  lurid  sunshine  flood, 

The  brandished  sabres  flash  and  hack, 
Raging  in  fury  of  attack — 

A  Seljuck  sateless  lust  of  blood. 

And  now  the  heavy  guns  assail, 

And  rank  and  file  and  columns  gape 
Before  the  hurtle  of  the  grape, 

Before  the  bursting  shell's  mitraille. 

In  jungle-growth,  awaiting  chance, 

Swart  ambushed  fiends  lie  crouching  low, 
Till  on  the  foremost  ranks  of  foe 

Their  storm  of  metal  checks  advance. 

Loud  roar  defiant  throats  of  doom, 
Shrill  battle-cries  and  bugle-calls  ; 
The  bursting  shrapnel-shards  and  balls, 

Staining  the  soil  with  crimson  rheum, 

Spread  Murder's  fratricidal  reign : 
Fear-blind,  unmastered  horses  tread, 
Hoofs  to  the  fetlocks,  dripping  red, 

With  reek  and  carnage  of  the  plain. 

34 


Of  Bedlam  scenes,  no  lull,  no  lack ! 
Horrors  through  all  the  blood-lust  run 
Orgies  of  slaughter — every  one 

A  homicidal  maniac. 


XXIII. 

The  wounded  strew  the  hill  and  heath, 
In  anguished  eyes  a  look  of  hate  ; 
While  some,  in  stoic  calmness,  wait 

The  crowning  dignity  of  death — 

Death  for  a  good  mankind  will  share, 
Death  on  the  crucial  field  of  strife ; 
Yielding  their  manhood,  love  and  life, 

Casting  their  all  in  fealty  there. 

Some,  cursing  despots,  ere  they  die 
Cheer  onset  with  their  failing  breath, 
For  Freedom's  triumph,  counting  Death 

A  synonym  of  Victory. 

35 


To  others,  gently  does  it  come, 

As  if  a  beatific  dream 

Brought  childhood  back,  and,  smiling,  seem 
To  hear  the  cradle-songs  of  home. 

All  sights,  all  sounds  are  types  of  dread  : 
The  yells  of  hate  when  comrades  die, 
The  terrored  horses'  horrent  cry, 

Their  hot  hoofs  trampling  the  cold  dead. 


XXIV. 

While  ranks  with  equal  forces  cope, 
And  vapor  veils  the  lower  land, 
Those  rude  battalions  waiting  stand 

Unleashed  upon  the  upland  slope, 

Though  imminent  the  conflict  swells, 
Their  stubborn  forces  ruffled  not, 
Though  fretted  with  the  whistling  shot, 

And  harried  by  the  shrieking  shells. 

36 


And  far-afield,  on  left  and  right, 

On  that  Aceldama  of  Death, 

A  mist  hangs  poised,  a  cloud-land  wraith, 
The  vapored  demon  of  the  fight  ! 

But  now,  as  on  the  lethal  plain 

Death  harvests  in  their  brother-ranks, 
And  blattering  Catlings  mow  their  flanks, 

As  scythemen  in  the  August  grain, 

Restraint  no  longer  balks  desire  ; 
For,  all  alight,  their  sombre  line, 
Lit  by  their  volleying  musket-shine, 

From  flanks  to  centre  frilled  with  fire, 

Sends  red-disaster  on  the  foe, 
Ere  in  the  tragic  chaos  mixed, 
With  muskets  leveled,  bayonets  fixed, 

To  check  advancing  files,  they  go  ; 


37 


XXV. 

While  aiding  forces,  ambush-screened, 
Hidden  by  schistous-rock  and  heath, 
Pour  unremitted  streams  of  death 

From  deadly  rifles  magazined. 

Then  sounds  the  bugled  "  Charge  ! "  and  all 
Their  thousands,  as  an  unit  wrought, 
Their  weapons  from  the  shoulder  brought, 

Down  to  the  horizontal  fall ; 

And  on  the  foemen  loping,  leap 

In  "double-quick,"  with  shout  and  whoop, 
As  unjessed  hawks  on  quarry  swoop, 

Made  deadly  from  their  downward  sweep. 

As  waters  stored  in  tarn  or  pond, 
By  brimming  affluents,  freshet-fed, 
Rise  swirling,  foaming,  gathering  head, 

At  last  burst  dike,  and,  freed  from  bond, 

38 


Rush  with  relentless  havoc  down 
The  valley's  slant,  and  in  their  tide 
Spread  death  and  desolation  wide, 

To  homestead,  hamlet,  thorp  and  town  ; 

So  from  the  hill-slopes  where  they  stood, 
On  and  over  the  roaring  plains, 
As  torrents  flushed  by  boisterous  rains, 

They  dash,  a  flashing,  thund'rous  flood  ! 

The  fields  are  deluged  left  and  right, 
As  onward,  in  marauding  leap, 
Obstructions  vanish  in  their  sweep, 

In  maelstrom  vortices  of  fight. 

Steel  sun-bursts  in  the  lurid  hordes 
Like  lightnings  play  in  rising  storm, 
As  following  horsemen  charge  and  swarm, 

A  hurricane  of  flashing  swords. 

Unchecked,  unbaffled,  they  o'erride 
Burrock  and  dyke,  as  human  checks, 
Till  all  the  fields  are  strewn  with  wrecks, 

As  seashores  stormed  at  full  springtide. 

39 


A  cataract !  no  pause  it  knows  ; 

No  bulkhead  barrier  balks  the  flood ; 

But  on,  incarnadined  with  blood, 
Its  course  in  mad  vendetta  flows. 


XXVI. 

Ere  yet  in  flux  full  force  prevails, 
Its  onward  coming  some  espy, 
And,  terrored  by  its  onrush,  fly 

Like  swirling  leaves  in  autumn  gales  ; 

While  others,  non-contentious,  stood, 
Engrossed,  and  to  amazement  stirred, 
That  vital  movement  seen,  and  heard 

The  roar  of  its  relentless  flood. 

More  dread  than  ocean's  tidal  reel, 
Turbid  with  deep-sea  ooze,  to  set 
At  naught  all  human  force  or  let — 

This,  crowned  with  foam  of  tossing  steel. 

40 


XXVII. 

The  turf  takes  lavish  tints  of  red ; 
To  bayonet-lunge  and  savage  shout 
The  foremost  lines  recoil  in  rout, 

And  broader  strewn  the  field  with  dead. 

Pitiless  force  !  a  ravening  brute  ! 
Its  jungle-hunger  keen  from  fast, 
So  leaps  the  fold,  and  carnage  vast 

Attests  a  tigerish  glut  of  loot. 

For  not  a  face  which,  scowled  and  grim 
With  an  unsated  hate,  but  seals 
Some  foeman's  fate  with  blows  he  deals, 

As  Death  strides  hand-in-hand  with  him. 

t 


For  all  the  accreted  wrongs  of  Might 
Find  hate-expression  in  their  acts : 
Measure  for  measure  !  nothing  lacks, 

And  Vengeance  revels  as  Delight. 

41 


Retired  forces  still  intact, 

Beholding  assured  doom  abroad, 

Scorn  flight,  and  though  to  silence  awed, 

Await  unmoved  the  dread  impact. 

Then  to  the  onslaught's  ruthless  trend 
A  solstice  pause — a  breathless  hush — 
As  prelude  to  the  frenzied  rush, 

When  stubborn  lines  of  battle  bend 

And  break :  then  Havoc,  thus  let  loose, 
Holds  Molock  by  the  free  red  hand, 
With  Slaughter,  of  the  triune  band, 

Proclaiming  neither  halt  nor  truce. 

The  centre  pierced,  the  fight  is  won ; 
The  huddled  flanks  in  panic  halt, 
Confronted  by  oblique  assault 

From  file  on  file  in  echelon. 

Before  a  tyrant-hating  race 

Some  hireling  troops  fly  far-afield, 
Or  to  the  free-born  yeomen  yield, 

Trusting  to  Freedom's  lenient  grace. 

42 


XXVIII. 

And  now  the  bugles  sound  recall, 

And,  in  the  blurred  and  blood-red  sun 
(Endorsement  of  the  action  done, 

With  promised  darkness  as  its  pall), 

A  sullen  veil  of  powder-cloud 

Moves  slowly  leeward  from  the  plain, 
Revealing  dying  and  the  slain, 

And  wounded  men  in  anguish  bowed. 

Now  swells  a  fierce  exultant  tone, 
As  Conquest  to  the  cities  comes, 
Welcomed  in  flames  of  blazing  homes — 

Then  silence,  where  the  hearths  are  lone  ! 


The  'larums  of  the  conflict  cease  ; 
The  bugle  and  tempestuous  drum, 
The  cannon's  rending  uproar,  dumb — 

All  folded  in  the  hush  of  peace, 

43 


As  if  a  cataract's  flood  should  pour 
To  depths  abyssmal,  suddenly  ; 
Leaving  its  air-born  din  to  be 

A  tingling  silence — nothing  more  ; 

All  sound  engulfed  in  stillness  vast, 
Yet  haunted  bv  a  tumult's  thrill 

m 

Once  heard,  and  hearing  weirdly  still, 
The  phantom-roar  of  battle  past — 

Delusions  which  our  griefs  create, 

When,  heart-bereaved,  we  seem  to  hear 
The  household  stir  of  dead  and  dear, 

Knowing  the  home  is  desolate. 

The  fields  from  battle  clamor  free, 

The  woodland  birds,  on  venturous  wing, 
O'er  the  sad  meadows  poise  and  sing  : 

Nature's  unconscious  irony ! 

As  specks,  beyond  the  murk  of  war, 
That  veiled  blood-sodden  soil  below 
Gier-falcon,  lazar-kite  and  crow, 

Scenting  the  festal  carcass,  soar. 

44 


XXIX. 

If  subject  peoples  would  be  free, 
Then  every  weapon's  astral  glint 
Should  prove  a  herald-star,  to  hint 

Where  lies  redeeming  liberty. 

Low  sinks  the  sun  ;  the  day  is  done ; 
Though  silent  now  the  battle's  rave, 
Its  shot-torn,  raveled  banners  wave, 

Proclaiming  Freedom's  purpose  won. 

'Mid  tattered  standards,  shattered  files, 
Haggard  and  gapped  victorious  bands, 
Paled  by  their  pathos,  Freedom  stands, 

And,  in  her  holy  triumph,  smiles  ! 

She  smiles  on  one  whose  dying  grip 
A  havocked  staff,  of  flag  bereft, 
Sustains  :  a  ribboned  remnant  left, 

Of  Peril's  fearful  fellowship. 

45 


An  omened  sight  to  look  upon, 
Nimbused  in  sunset's  after-glow — 
Those  shredded  buntings'  rippled  flow, 

Riddled  to  shapes  of  gonfalon  ! 


XXX. 

No  bugled  boast !  no  vaunting  fife  ! 

War's  blood-shot  vision  grown  more  calm  ; 

Each  ravaged  flag  an  Oriflamme 
Floating  above  a  "  Holy  Strife." 

Up  from  the  underworld  arise 

The  sombre  shades  of  daylight's  pall ; 
And  vesper-shadows  softly  fall, 

As  closing  lids  o'er  weary  eyes. 

The  tragic  field  grows  weird  and  wan 
As  twilight  deepens  o'er  the  slave, 
Who  gave  to  Freedom  life  God  gave, 

Made  worthless  by  the  crime  of  man. 

46 


Night  falls  apace .  On  field  of  dread 
The  pale  moon  looks,  as  if  in  pain, 
Where  foes  on  foes  lie  swathed  like  grain  : 

Grim  windrows  of  ungarnered  dead. 

Mothers,  obeying  Love's  behests, 

Within  death's  cold,  impassive  grasp, 
In  piteous  mockery,  seem  to  clasp 

Their  babes  to  unsustaining  breasts, 

Or  to  a  vital  anguish  yield, 

O'er  form  of  daughter,  dead,  defiled  ; 

While  wife  distraught,  and  homeless  child, 
Roam,  moaning,  o'er  the  woeful  field. 

The  slaughter  ended,  vampire  bands 
Render  the  lull  of  horrors  brief. 
After  the  victor  skulks  the  thief, 

And  corpses  stripped  by  hideous  hands. 

WTar  ever  sows  its  rueful  path 

For  gruesome  product,  Science  saith  ; 
A  harvest-time  of  dole  and  death, 

With  "  Typhoid  "  as  an  aftermath. 

47 


Oh  righteous  cause,  but  fateful  day  ! 

I  look  through  tears  upon  the  plain. 

Accursed  War  !    Oh  piteous  slain  ! 
They're  brothers  all !  hush  !  come  away. 


XXXI. 

When  'gainst  mild  rule  the  rabble  plot, 
And  riff-raff  riot  stalks  abroad, 
Dons  Phrygian  cap,  girds  Spartan  sword, 

Great  Freedom's  forehead  flushes  hot, 

As  shamed  to  feel  her  aims  profaned, 
Seeing  men  so  pervert  her  trust, 
Claiming  her  aid  with  lips  of  lust, 

With  hearts  so  foul  and  guilt-ingrained. 

Lay  not  your  unregenerate  hands 
Upon  the  ark  of  her  pure  cause, 
Feigning  the  acts  of  righteous  wars, 

Lest  lightnings  scathe  your  impious  bands. 

48 


If,  Freedom,  in  thy  hallowed  name, 
Grim  Insurrection,  gathering  head, 
From  realm  to  realm,  incentive  spread 

To  souls  who  lack  thy  sacred  flame, 

• 

And,  prompted  by  a  senseless  hate 
Of  social  laws  which  bind  the  race 
In  civic  virtue's  linked  embrace, 

Invite  an  anarchistic  state, 

Smite  the  blasphemers  !  putting  down 
The  right  arm  of  revolt,  and  stay 
The  demagogue's  seditious  sway, 

That  falsifies  thy  fair  renown. 


XXXII. 

For  Freedom's  state  is  not  sustained 
By  brawling  malcontents,  nor  bands 
That  Riot  breeds,  and  Mob  commands, 

Nor  wrongs  of  despotisms,  feigned  ; 

49 


Nor  slaves  accepting  slavery's  shame  ; 
But,  protest  spurned,  petition  mocked, 
Revolt  in  Freedom's  cradle  rocked, 

With  Freedom  seal  eternal  claim. 

If,  sanctified  by  Her  pure  fires, 
They  rise  to  have  their  wrongs  redressed, 
Encourage  heart !  embolden  breast ! 

Make  keen  the  blade  for  their  desires  ! 

Let  holy  madness  thrill  their  veins, 
Till  through  their  cause  such  passion  runs 
That  widows  arm  their  only  sons, 

And  slaves  brain  tyrants  with  their  chains  ; 

And  despots  learn  how  dread  a  thing 
It  is  to  rouse  a  people's  hate, 
Choosing  to  balk  predestined  fate, 

Shunning  the  perilled  state  of  King — 

A  title  freemen  will  not  trust, 

Held  by  the  brotherhood  of  men, 
As  by  the  compeered  citizen — 

Preposterous  claim  for  equal  dust  ! 

50 


Rarely  from  crime  have  Sovereigns  shrunk 
When  subject  to  the  priest's  intent ; 
The  Crown  before  the  Mitre  bent ; 

Monarch,  to  coadjutor  monk  ; 

Coordinating  royal  plans 

With  those  of  Churchdom's  evil  sway, 
For  man's  oppression  ;  every  way 

Its  ignominious  partisans. 

All  tyrannies  have  myrmidons, 

Scum-mercenaries,  whom  they  pay, 
For  murder  at  so  much  a  day, 

And  raping  mothers,  slaught'ring 


sons; 


The  realms  perplexed,  with  feud  and  schism 
'Twixt  royal  greed  and  public  weal ; 
A  people's  rule  constrained  to  deal, 

At  last,  with  clearest  absolutism. 


XXXIII. 

While  strife  and  faction  threatening  swarm 
Around  the  Old  World's  feudal  holds, 
What  blest  tranquillity  enfolds 

My  own  dear  land  amid  the  storm  ! 

Starward  with  ever  changeless  gaze, 
Progressing  in  her  path  benign, 
Visioned  with  some  predestined  fine, 

Undreamed  in  childhood's  primer  days  ; 

Casting  the  larval-shell  of  birth 
From  pupa-chrysalid,  to  rise, 
Winged  for  a  flight  of  high  emprise, 

Among  the  potencies  of  earth  ; 

In  good,  ascendant  'mong  mankind, 
Holding  a  cheering  light,  whose  ray 
Of  Nadir-night  makes  Zenith  day, 

And  freedom  sought  for  all  to  find. 

52 


XXXIV. 

When  nations,  weary  of  the  cant 

Of  the  dogmatic  pietist, 

And,  made  by  culture,  wise,  resist 
The  claims  of  the  Hierophant, 

And  ruthless  rule  fails  to  divorce, 
From  honored  labor,  half  its  store ; 
And  peaceful  masses  dwell  no  more 

Will-shackled  in  the  grip  of  force  ; 

Then  feuds  will  perish,  wars  will  cease, 
Freedom  invoked,  a  God  adored, 
And  all  mankind,  in  full  accord, 

Chant  paeans  to  perpetual  peace. 

The  birth  of  love  and  kindly  laws, 
And  loud  the  people's  anthem  swells, 
Melodious  riot  of  the  bells 

Aiding  humanity's  applause. 

53 


XXXV. 

Though  now,  not  vexed  with  war,  like  these, 
Nor  Insurrection's  vandal  rage, 
Who  knows  that  thy  historic  page 

May  not  claim  grave  appendices  ? 

Thou'rt  Freedom's  Life-Guard,  yet  forsworn  ; 
For  Slavery,  like  pysemic  taint, 
Poisons  thy  force,  and  thou  art  faint, 

Like  a  young  Samson  lewdly  shorn. 

Thy  foes  are  internecine  !  Dense, 

Myopic  blindness  !  not  to  see 

Th'  antithesis  of  Liberty 
That  stultifies  thy  proud  pretense. 

Their  bonds  of  Union  do  not  bind ! 
Trusting  in  Freedom's  home  to  bide, 
And  make  their  Slave-Colossus  stride 

Athwart  the  Haven  of  mankind. 

54 


Not  these  alone  the  foes  to  heed, 

Nor  worst  of  despots  gun  and  sword  ; 
Chief  among  thralls,  and  most  abhorred, 

The  bondage  of  Belief  and  Creed. 


XXXVI. 

INTERLOCUTORY. 

The  world  is  full  of  noble  deeds, 

The  Doers'  paths  rose-leaved  with  Fame  ; 

No  primrosed  ones  my  days  may  claim, 
Brambled  and  pranked  with  idlest  weeds. 

If  God,  my  purpose  blessing,  would 
Look  kindly  on  the  grain  I  sow, 
Scattered  in  human  hearts,  to  grow 

And  ripen  for  the  general  good, 

Blessing  my  brother-man,  then  I, 

Cheering  my  joyless  years,  may  boast 
I  helped  through  life,  my  uttermost, 

To  slay  a  God-dishonoring  Lie. 

55 


XXXV. 

Though  now,  not  vexed  with  war,  like  these, 
Nor  Insurrection's  vandal  rage, 
Who  knows  that  thy  historic  page 

May  not  claim  grave  appendices  ? 

Thou'rt  Freedom's  Life-Guard,  yet  forsworn  ; 
For  Slavery,  like  pyaemic  taint, 
Poisons  thy  force,  and  thou  art  faint, 

Like  a  young  Samson  lewdly  shorn. 

Thy  foes  are  internecine  !  Dense, 

Myopic  blindness  !  not  to  see 

Th'  antithesis  of  Liberty 
That  stultifies  thy  proud  pretense. 

Their  bonds  of  Union  do  not  bind ! 
Trusting  in  Freedom's  home  to  bide, 
And  make  their  Slave-Colossus  stride 

Athwart  the  Haven  of  mankind. 

54 


Not  these  alone  the  foes  to  heed, 

Nor  worst  of  despots  gun  and  sword  ; 
Chief  among  thralls,  and  most  abhorred, 

The  bondage  of  Belief  and  Creed. 


XXXVI. 

INTERLOCUTORY. 

The  world  is  full  of  noble  deeds, 

The  Doers'  paths  rose-leaved  with  Fame  ; 

No  primrosed  ones  my  days  may  claim, 
Brambled  and  pranked  with  idlest  weeds. 

If  God,  my  purpose  blessing,  would 
Look  kindly  on  the  grain  I  sow, 
Scattered  in  human  hearts,  to  grow 

And  ripen  for  the  general  good, 

Blessing  my  brother-man,  then  I, 

Cheering  my  joyless  years,  may  boast 
I  helped  through  life,  my  uttermost, 

To  slay  a  God-dishonoring  Lie. 

55 


To  no  malignancy  inclined, 

But  done  to  cure  distorted  lives, 

And,  like  the  surgeon's  probes  and  knives, 

Though  seeming  cruel,  yet  are  kind. 

And  earth  might  never  more  hear  prate 
The  Pulpit's  strategists  of  fraud, 
Their  blasphemies  denounced  and  scored 

With  everlasting  human  hate. 


XXXVII. 

The  Church  is  gospel-armed,  and  rife 
With  equipage  for  human  woe, 
Wide-jawed  for  prey,  the  deadliest  foe 

Of  larger  intellectual  life. 

Humanity's  uncultured  throng, 

Debauched  and  credulous,  sustains 
Its  tumored  Lie,  which  now  remains 

Th'  imposthume  of  an  embossed  wrong. 

56 


From  hence  aborts  a  dangerous  breed, 
Debarred  from  culture,  bound  to  stay, 
Through  ignorance,  the  spoil  and  prey 

Of  sacerdotal  guile  and  greed  ; 

A  state  whose  sequents  none  can  gauge, 
Holding,  in  ever  procreant  prime, 
Germs  of  venality  and  crime, 

To  stain  the  annals  of  the  age. 


XXXVIII. 

Must  Superstition  ever  blind 
Humanity  to  Truth,  and  laud 
Gross  records  of  a  barbarous  horde 

As  God's  revealments  to  mankind? 

Are  there  no  tyrannies  but  thrones  ? 
Beneath  the  Priest's  empiric  rule, 
Believing  man — weak,  hood-winked  fool  !- 

In  abject  bondage,  trusts  and  groans. 

57 


Are  there  no  slaves  save  those  who  wear 
Fetters  of  metal  ?     Faith  will  breed 
Helots  of  dogma,  cult  and  creed  : 

Are  such  less  worthy  Freedom's  care  ? 

Bankrupt  of  life's  delights,  to  go 

Scourged  to  their  graves  by  human  ill, 
Slaves  of  the  priest's  relentless  will, 

Ruled  by  a  Christ-masked  ruthless  foe. 

Must  faith  in  falsehood  still  be  kept, 
Though  cultured  Prejudice  assign 
To  an  Intelligence  Divine 

The  fraud  of  Priests,  in  guile  adept  ? 

How  long  will  generations  heed 

The  fictions  filched  from  Pagan  store, 
To  be  their  manual  evermore, 

And  guidance  in  their  utmost  need  ? 


XXXIX. 

From  immemorial  solitude 
Of  prehistoric  times  there  ran 
Babble  of  paleolithic  man — 

The  unshamed  races  of  the  nude — 


Which,  in  the  course  of  seons,  came, 

Through  Star,  and  Sun,  and  Serpent  cult, 
And  grosser  worships,  to  result 

At  last  in  an  Akkadian  frame 

Of  allegoric  gospel ;  planned 

By  Astrologic  Holy-Sees, 

With  esoteric  mysteries, 
Which  few  could  ever  understand 


(Thus  all  discovery  defy), 

To  be  "  God's  Word,"    and  so  rule  earth, 
Throughout  its  peopled  length  and  girth, 

WlTH  A  CHICANE,  PRESUMPTUOUS    LIE  ! 

59 


Then  back,  from  alien  bonds  unbound, 
Came  Israel  from  the  Orient, 
With  dreams  of  shekel  cent-per-cent, 

To  Zion,  and  marts  trade-renowned. 

Still  in  inherent  bondage  held 
By  habits  they  could  not  ignore, 
They  tricked  their  God  and  Biblic  lore 

In  "  outfit  "  of  moth-eaten  Eld. 

"  Old  clothes  "  of  Babylonian  myth, 
Bartered  when  slaves,  Chaldean-made, 
The  staple  of  that  stock-in-trade, 

Religion  now  is  costumed  with. 


XL. 


In  astronomic  mythos  bides 

The  secret  of  that  knavish  plan, 
Wherewith  the  priest  befools  the  man — 

A  scheme  which  Allegory  hides. 

60 


Of  Pagan  deities  no  lack  ! 

As  sun-types  in  the  cults  of  old, 
Gods  in  mutation  signed  and  rolled 

Throughout  the  girdling  Zodiac. 

Messiahs,  Buddhas,  every  one 
Of  all  the  gods  to  Pagans  known, 
Pass  o'er  the  constellated  zone, 

Precessioned  as  th'  incarnate  sun. 

And  Christs  have  come  and  passed  like  these 
Such  Gentile  allegories  wrought 
God-avatars  by  mythos  brought, 

Circling  through  cyclic  Neroses. 

And  on  the  globe's  solsticial-cross, 
There  crucified,  and  sepulchred 
In  Winter's  dark,  find  death  deferred, 

To  rise  in  Life's  redeeming  force. 

Here  the  Christ-fable  seems  to  be 
To  its  inception  clearly  traced  : 
The  scheme  of  man's  salvation  based 

On  spurious  myth-typology. 

61 


The  Sun-god  Christ's  career  thus  given 
In  signs  zodiacal ;  and  there 
The  stars  the  gospel  fraud  lay  bare — 

The  fable  found,  sun-typed  in  heaven  ! 

Conspicuous  truth  to  him  who  weighs 
Belief  in  reason's  scales,  and  drilled 
In  allegoric  lore,  or  skilled 

In  metaphor  of  by-gone  days. 

To  every  faith  on  Earth  that's  been 
The  Sun-God  is  the  master-key, 
Unlocking  every  mystery 

From  Brahma  to  the  Nazarene. 

Thus  on  veiled  fact  delusion  feasts, 

And  thrives,  till  Truth's  shekinah  comes, 
And,  with  its  radiant  presence,  dooms 

The  dismal  Dynasty  of  Priests. 

Fooled  by  a  God-revealed  pretence, 
Making  man's  gross  imaginings 
His  gospel-falsity  of  things, 

Acts  of  Divine  Intelligence — 

62 


A  Church,  established  on  that  base, 
Becomes  a  potency  in  wrong, 
With  guile  and  fraudulency  strong, 

To  blind,  enslave,  degrade  the  race. 


XLI. 

Are  martyred  " masses"  doomed  to  die, 
Of  half  the  charms  of  life  bereaved, 
And,  ever  trusting,  be  deceived 

BY    ONE    INTERMINABLE    LlE  ? 

Of  one  more  evil  to  beware 

With  which  th'  unstinted  world  is  rife ; 

To  quicksands  on  the  shores  of  life 
One  more  illusion,  one  more  snare? 

Through  brake  and  quickset,  graveward  plod  ? 

Is  Justice  lapped  in  indolence, 

And  niggard  of  Omnipotence 
Etheric  Force  which  man  calls  God  ? 

63 


A  creed  whereby  the  Christian  views 
(Through  bigotry's  demented  whim) 
As  truth,  that  suffering  pleasures  him, 

And  therefore  baits  his  chosen  Jews. 

This  graceless  monster  to  endure 
A  sore  affront  to  common  sense  ; 
From  loathing  him,  the  abstinence, 

Merit  to  make  Salvation  sure. 


XLIII. 

To  any  Heaven,  a  sheer  disgrace  : 
By  an  allotment  wrongly  made, 
It  should  have  been  reversed  instead, 

And  Hell's  archangel  in  his  place. 

Though  doubtful  if  Apollyon  well 

Could  suffer  long  such  sing-song  fate  ; 
But,  hating  dullness,  abdicate 

In  favor  of  more  cheerful  hell. 

66 


Against  such  Gorgons  reason  wars. 

Abhorrent  to  the  cultured  thought ! 

Yet  by  gross-minded  priestcraft  wrought 
As  imaging  Primordial  Cause. 

A  dream  that  vulgar  mind  controls, 
Where  ignorance  holds  cruel  sway ; 
Such  scarecrow  Gods  weak  hearts  affray- 

The  nightmares  of  unwakened  souls. 

Yet  Christians  such  belief  avow — 
Religion  in  which  scholars  trace 
The  tokens  of  a  breech-clout  race  : 

Is  Demon  worship  extant  now  ? 

A  worthier  god  "  Isaiah  "  planned, 
And  "  Micah,"  than  a  fiend  like  this, 
The  Demon  of  the  Genesis, 

By  all  unbiased  natures  banned. 


67 


XLIV. 

When  through  the  weird  primeval  seas, 
That,  Chaos-born,  knew  yet  no  calm, 
Hideous-Octopodise  swam, 

With  Saurian  monstrosities  ; 

And  reptiles  of  Jurassic  times 

Swarmed  land,  swam  seas  and  winged  the  air, 

If  embryo  man  coeval  were 
With  forms  of  Oolitic  slimes  ; 

The  inborn  "god-idea,"  unripe, 

Might  in  the  protoplasmic  mind 

Favor  a  Mesozoic  kind, 
A  god  of  Jehovistic  type. 

By  Evolution's  laws  expressed 

In  the  brute  man,  this  God  evolved, 
From  all  divine  allure  absolved, 

A  free  development's  arrest. 

68 


Pantheons  of  like  grade  have  thus 
To  the  black  ranks  of  falsehood  fled, 
All,  metaphorically,  dead 

As  Pharaoh  of  the  Exodus. 

Beshrew  such  bestial  gods  and  grim  ! 
The  Man,  with  gentle  manhood  fraught, 
Is  nearer  to  Divineness  brought 

Than  Yahveh  or  the  Elohim. 


XLV. 

Must  God  to  mortals  ever  be 
Anthropomorphic  to  their  view  ? 
The  simulacrum  of  a  Jew, 

Made  monster  by  theanthropy  ? 

Concept  of  Deity,  alloyed 

By  mixing  in  the  barb'rous  plan 
The  savage  prehistoric  man, 

Evolved  from  Pithecanthropoid. 

69 


God-modeling  Priests,  do  you  not  see, 
In  matrix  pouring  man  and  myth, 
In  flux  with  godhead,  you  therewith 

Have  cast  a  pagod  prodigy  ? 

Gross  moulding  art !  vile  plastic  plan  ! 
The  human  still  in  brutish  grade, 
With  mythic  god  amalgamed,  made 

A  most  ungodly  god  for  man. 

Could  naught  but  brutal  falsehood  quell 
Man's  errant  nature  ?  naught  else  lead 
To  virtue,  and  to  goodly  deed, 

But  horrors  of  prospective  hell  ? 

Is  his  a  love  to  emulate  ? 

Or  justice,  that  this  Ghoul  decrees 

For  error,  endless  agonies, 
Which  is  but  an  eternized  hate  ? 

'Tis  not  the  laic  soul  that  feasts 
On  visions  of  unending  pain 
For  erring  man  ;  such  hatreds  reign 

Alone  in  demon-hearts  of  Priests. 

70 


For  Priests,  since  man's  invented  fall 
For  human  childhood  and  its  prime, 
Have  fashioned  gods  in  every  clime, 

And  typefied  themselves  in  all. 


XLVI. 

From  finite  limits  ne'er  exempt, 

Can  mortal  man  life's  mystery  solve? 
Or,  from  this  God  in  vogue,  evolve 

A  loving  Father  ? — vain  attempt  ! 

There  is  no  God  like  this,  abhorred ; 

None,  save  in  the  degraded  mind  ; 

Falsehood  and  cruelty  combined, 
With  its  base  passions  in  accord. 

Vile  parody  of  Power  Supreme  ! 

Which,  by  a  cozening  sect  portrayed, 

Has  blasphemed  God,  fooled  man,  and  made 

Religion  but  a  Bedlam  dream ; 

71 


A  fable  schemed  by  priestly  arts 
In  days  of  ignorance  and  lust ; 
A  monster  that  excites  disgust. 

Not  worship  of  the  loving  hearts  ; 

No  loftier  aim  than  power  and  pelf 
And  arbitrary  rule  to  win ; 
A  priest-made  god  of  human  kin, 

The  image  of  his  beastlier  self. 


XLVII. 

Who  dare  to  mock  The  Lord  of  Truth, 
Proclaiming  love  for  gods  like  this  ? 
A  Heaven  of  mere  psalm-singing  bliss  ; 

Hell,  to  fill  fiends  with  tearful  ruth. 

Shameless  imposture  !  strangely  odd 
That  man,  of  Reason  justly  proud, 
Should  be  in  supplication  bowed, 

Before  this  most  preposterous  god. 

72 


Subvert  the  idol !  straighten  knees  ! 
Erect,  arise  and  kneel  before 
A  Presence  worthier  to  adore 

Than  fabricated  gods  like  these  ! 

Above  such  morbid  horrors  rise  ! 
Pretendedly  beloved — as  true  : 
This  Mumbo-Jumbo  of  the  Jew  ! 

Th'  embodied  form  of  gross  surmise. 


XLVIII. 

Wherein  have  we  the  right  to  boast, 
Or  Anthropophagi  revile, 
Breed  of  some  lone  Pacific  isle — 

Or  Kongo's,  or  Biaffra's  coast, 

In  making  hideous  gods,  expert  ? 
Who  worship  one  with  fervid  air, 
Till,  unpropitious  to  their  prayer, 

They  daub  its  camoised  nose  with  dirt  ? 

73 


As  well  that  human  faith  should  be 
In  M clock  of  the  bloody  rites, 
Or  Demon  of  Gehenna's  lights, 

Or  goat-hoofed  Pan  of  Arcady  ; 

In  Gods  of  Battle,  Gods  of  Peace, 
In  Siva,  Vishnoo,  Baal  and  Bel, 
In  negroid  Buddha,  and  as  well 

In  all  the  rabble  gods  of  Greece. 

From  Egypt's  clime,  as  fair  results, 

Serapis,  Isis,  Apis,  Ra, 

Osiris,  or  the  Latin  Lar, 
Penates  of  the  household  cults, 

As  well  in  Obi  and  Voodoo, 
Or  Theurgy  and  magic  runes, 
In  cantrip,  thaumaturgic  tunes, 

The  fetish-rites  of  Timbuctoo  ; 

As  well  to  crossed-legged  Brahma  bow, 
Or  Punjab-gods  for  Sakti's  sake, 
The  Lingam,  Yoni  and  the  Snake, 

And  reverence  the  Holy  Cow  ; 

74 


As  to  the  phantoms,  priest-devised, 
To  fright  the  souls  of  simple  men, 
Making  the  human  mind  a  den 

Of  monsters  apotheosized. 


XLIX. 

For  Christianity  creates 

No  longer  faith  that  binds  and  blinds 

The  large  majority  of  minds, 
Save  those  of  marked  degenerates. 

Cored  with  an  astrologic  pith 

Of  sun-god  worship  :  swathed  and  rolled 
In  cere-cloth  of  beliefs  of  old  : 

The  embalmed  mummy  of  a  Myth. 

Yet  if,  in  this  more  cultured  age, 

Some  show  hereditary  taint, 

Faith  is  but  hypocritic  feint, 
Masking  a  coward  vassalage  ; 

75 


Or  issue  of  the  pious  kind 
Of  fable  dealt  to  innocence  ; 
While  flaccid  yet  its  waxing  sense, 

Stamped  on  the  child's  receptive  mind. 


L. 

Man  knoweth  not  the  Primal  Cause 
In  blind  Hyrcynian  mazes  hid, 
Which  nothing  mortal  e'er  will  thrid 

To  find  the  Image  he  implores. 

To  vestal  heights  of  mountains  flee, 
Pour  out  thy  soul  in  tearful  prayer, 
Yearning  to  know  if  God  be  there, 

Yearning  to  know  what  God  may  be. 

Search  endless  space  and  time,  and  steep 
Thy  heart  in  lovingness,  and  call — 
Where  art  Thou,  God  ?     From  each  and  all, 

Silence  unutterably  deep. 

76 


Outvoice  the  controversial  roar 
Of  ocean  tempested  ;  and  let 
Concurrent  Universe  abet 

The  questioning — thou'lt  hear  no  more. 

In  painful  longing  be  not  led, 
Tortured  by  an  expectant  ear, 
An  answering  voice  thou  wilt  not  hear, 

Though  thou  wert  patient  as  the  dead. 

In  atoms  to  the  Cosmos  wrought, 
In  mind,  in  matter,  light  and  air, 
In  all  that  is,  and  everywhere, 

HE  is — impalpable  as  thought. 


LI. 

Can  Finite  grasp  the  Infinite, 

Gaze  on  transcendencies  that  dim 
The  vision  of  the  Cherubim, 

Who,  while  adoring,  veil  their  sight  ? 

77 


As  vain  for  human  mind  to  guess 
Abstraction's  form,  as  to  expand 
Eternity ;  or  understand 

An  unhorizoned  Nothingness. 

The  Inconceivable  by  Man  ! 

Essence  of  Space  !  Primord'nate  Law, 

Limitless  Energy !  before 
Matter's  Eternity  began. 

Of  Him  we  cannot  postulate 

Relation  with  nor  Time  nor  Space, 
Delusions  of  our  mortal  race, 

Mere  fictions  of  a  finite  state  ! 

His  all-pervading  essence  sent 
Through  His  Majestic  Universe, 
Cognate  with  substance  most  diverse  : 

In  every  atom  immanent. 

Beyond  Imagination's  reach  ! 
To  Man,  unthinkable  as  light 
To  the  "  born-blind , "  or  human  sight 

To  simple  mollusk  on  the  beach. 

78 


Beyond  the  concept  or  the  thought 
Of  earthly  or  seraphic  mind, 
Vain  all  ambitious  search  to  find 

Creative  Power,  the  Godhead  sought. 

Though  all  things  perish,  He  no  less 
Remains  pure  Spirit,  'biding  Love, 
Whose  arcane  influences  move 

Through  Nature's  steadfast  Everness. 


LII. 

Speechless  with  reverence  I  stand, 
O  Thou  transcendently  Obscure  ; 
Almighty  !  Pitilessly  Pure  ! 

Godhead's  superlative  of  Grand. 

With  bastard  births  the  age  is  thronged, 
And  creed-born  malformations  live, 
With  God,  as  Father  putative, 

His  name  by  such  abortions  wronged. 

79 


To  this,  true  Culture  crieth  truce ! 
No  longer  should  the  earth  defame 
His  should-be-honored  Holy  Name, 

By  service  in  ignoble  use, 

Whose  hallowed  attributes  to  teach, 
Priesthoods  are  but  as  senseless  stocks. 
His  infinite  Perfection  mocks 

Their  stinted  knowledge,  thought  and  speech. 


LIII. 

Stated  in  aphorism  terse, 

Man's  glory  is  in  "  pride  of  place  "  ! 

For  he  with  Him  stands  face  to  face 
GOD  is  HIMSELF  THE  UNIVERSE. 

Finite  holds  no  divining-rod 
For  searching  Infinite  ;  and  He 
Is  no  objective  entity : 

NATURE'S  TOTALITY  is  GOD  ! 

80 


Yet,  till  the  soul,  immaculate, 

Purged  of  all  carnate  grossness,  stands 
Pure  spirit  'mid  pure  Spirit  bands, 

In  loftiest  archangelic  state  ; 

Until  the  faculties  are  held, 

By  which  that  soul  can  measure  space, 
The  confines  of  th'  Eternal  trace, 

The  human  paradox  dispelled, 

Through  epochs  of  progression,  show 
No  taint  of  matter's  crass  control 
Upon  the  pure  discarnate  soul, 

Can  it  the  God  the  Father,  know. 

None  drawing  vital  breath,  as  one 
Cere-clothed  in  mortal  flesh,  jejune, 
The  human  larva's  coarse  cocoon  ! 

In  gross  materialism  spun, 

And  claimed  as  pabulum  by  Death, 
Who  through  his  limitations  views 
His  God's  moralities — a  Jew's — 

And  brutal  creeds  his  shibboleth, 

81 


From  Fetish  on  to  Fetish  plods, 
Evolving  Deity  of  varied  plan, 
In  workmanship  no  better  than 

Mud  idols  of  the  Rajpoot  Gods. 


LIV. 

Assoil  me,  Abba  !     Thou  art  just ! 
Nearer  to  be  to  Thee  my  goal, 
Attained  by  my  progressive  soul 

Through  paths  of  wonder,  love  and  trust. 

In  merciless  lucidity 

All  hearts  lie  open  to  Thy  view  ; 

We  know  Thou  lookest  us  thro'  and  thro': 

THOU  ART,  WHAT  THOU  ALONE  CANST  BE. 

Baffled,  in  human  helplessness, 

Within  imagination's  scope 

Thou  art  not,  yet  we  wondering  grope 
With  hearts  insatiate  :     ALL  is  GUESS! 

82 


Dreaming  my  spirit  part  of  Thine, 
This  body,  wondrous  fashioned  clay  ! 
Must  humbly  go  its  mortal  way, 

My  soul  absorbed  in  the  Divine  ; 

Or  its  evolving  force  succeeds 
The  heights  of  being  to  explore, 
Standing  immaculate  before 

THE  ETERNAL  WILL  ;  where  sequence  leads, 

Beholding  Universes  wound 

In  Evolution's  endless  chain  ; 

Interdependent,  to  remain 
Ever  in  Altruism  bound. 

Through  termless  time,  in  bourneless  space, 
Cognate  with  boundless  floods  of  soul 
That  countless  Universes  roll, 

Progressive,  to  behold  His  face. 


LV. 

Lacking  the  spirit-sight  to  see, 
Blind,  on  a  wonder-deep  I  drift ; 
Heart-grateful  for  the  sensuous  gift 

That  lets  me  feel  His  Sovereignty. 

The  world  is  full  of  wrong  and  strife, 
Yet  patiently  I  draw  my  breath  ; 
Since  He  has  made  the  dust  of  death 

The  breath  of  everlasting  life, 

In  spiritual  spheres  of  bliss, 

Exempt  from  carnate  wrong  and  hate  : 
But  love  with  love  commensurate — 

As  balm  for  pain  endured  in  this. 

Gladdened  with  hope  no  longer  dim, 
Godward  and  goodward  ;  without  stain, 
Immaculate  at  last,  to  gain 

Transcendent  joy  beholding  Him. 

84 


LVI. 

Are  priests  Thy  earthly  agencies  ? 

Christ  hated  Pharisees  who  preach  : 

A  delegated  mouthpiece  each, 
Of  Thy  Consummate  Wisdom — these  ? 

Enormity  of  bold  pretence  ! 

Immeasurable  blasphemy ! 

Boundless  presumption  !  which  must  be- 
To  the  Creator — grave  offence  ! 

No  "  Hypostatic  Union,"  His  ! 
Or  the  man-element  in  Him 
Would  wreck  their  papal  Sanhedrim 

With  Love's  most  rude  antithesis. 


And,  bliss  in  Heaven  growing  weak, 
The  saints  might  pretermit  their  lays, 
Cheer  dullness  with  delighted  gaze 

On  antics  of  their  simian  clique. 

85 


Who  could  foresee  their  destined  fate 
Were  God  like  their  Judaic  Joss  ? 
Partaking  of  the  Anthropos, 

A  vicious  gaseous-vertebrate  ? 

The  pismires  in  the  garden  walks, 
The  wise-eyed  Owls  in  ivy-tod, 
Know  quite  as  much  as  they  of  God, 

For  all  their  cant  and  verbiage  talks. 

Have  their  lips  th'  anointing  chrism, 
Explaining  Bible-themes,  perplexed, 
And  as  "  Thy  Word  "  affirm  the  text 

In  all  its  odious  literalism  ? 

Giving  trite-truths  perverting  trends 
To  suit  a  preconceived  intent ; 
And  quadrate  with  the  priestly  bent, 

A  selfish  means  to  sordid  ends  ; 

Perverting  man's  instinctive  sense 
Of  sacred  truth  by  Jesuit  guile, 
Through  every  form  of  fraud  and  wile 

Making  mentality  more  dense  ; 

86 


Or  theorems  of  God  advance 

As  guides  through  doctrinal  morass, 
Illumined  by  mephitic  gas 

From  cess  and  slough  of  ignorance  ; 

Or  with  dogmatic  precepts  prod 
Doubters  in  paths  to  true  belief 
Of  their  crass  bigotries  :  as  if 

Creeds  were  love-philters  for  their  God. 


LVII. 

In  vain  their  Sacred  Order  Caste 

On  blockhead  skulls  lays  Holy  Hands : 
That  rite  no  gift  of  brains  commands, 

Though  a  "bestowing"  function  classed. 

Yet  naught  the  priests'  assurance  daunts 
As  knowing  God,  lie-brazened  band  ! 
Too  false  to  truth  to  take  their  stand 

With  honest  bivalves,  owls  and  ants. 

87 


Promoters  of  an  effete  lore, 

They  teach  ;  but  of  what  worth  their  schools, 

Save  to  form  serviceable  tools 
With  which  to  enslave  the  "  masses  "  more  ? 

They  hold  no  doctrine  that  exalts  ; 

Their  rites  are  pagan  mummeries  : 

Dark  ages'  puerilities — 
Their  dogmas  and  their  motives  false. 

Were  there  no  virtues  on  the  earth, 
Nor  morals,  till  their  scheme  evolved, 
From  astronomic  myth,  and  solved 

The  value  of  man's  credent  worth  ? 


LVIII. 

Prospective  Heaven  cannot  appease 
Their  sanctimonious  worldliness, 
Nor  calm  their  cravings  to  possess 

Earth's  carnal  temporalities. 

88 


They  who  on  paltry  pulpit  heights 
Of  theologic  Horebs  stand, 
To  show  the  Almighty  One  at  hand, 

By  their  vile  marsh  miasmic-lights. 

Religion  called  !  yet  proves  to  be 

(Hiding  their  aim)  a  mask  for  these — 
The  few — to  live  in  idle  ease 

Upon  the  duped  Majority, 

And  draw  from  the  benighted  Poor 

A  fund  of  this  world's  wealth,  that  seems 
Greater  than  hoarding-miser  dreams, 

Which  by  Christ's  creed  they  should  abjure. 

As  much  life's  enemies  as  are 

Disease  and  Death,  their  guile  destroys 
Life's  stinted  sum  of  earthly  joys 

With  those  of  some  vague  heaven  afar  ; 

Holding  their  natures  love-subdued 

By  a  hoax-sacrifice  Divine, 

And  through  their  simple  trust,  design 
Exploiting  them  through  gratitude. 

89 


Malignant  spawn  of  Church,  that  ilk  ! 

Worst  foes  of  human  weal  that  breathe ! 

The  pharisaic-souled  who  seethe 
The  kid  in  its  own  mother's  milk. 


LIX. 

When  will  the  pillaged  "masses"  find 
The  Church  to  be  a  foe  to  fear? 
How  long  ere  the  oppressors  hear 

The  execrations  of  mankind  ? 

As  in  the  past,  so  now  no  less, 
Its  secret  knaveries  abound, 
And  wrongs  unparalleled,  when  found, 

Save  in  the  Devil's  diocese. 

Throughout  all  lands,  all  realms,  all  climes, 
On  concrete  falsehood  based  and  built, 
Cemented  by  red-handed  guilt : 

A  hideous  lazar-house  of  crimes. 

90 


Nor  should  the  Protestant  decry 
The  cognate  cheat,  the  allied  trick, 
A  consanguineous  heretic 

To  little  of  the  larger  lie. 

To  solemn  affirmation  true, 

Numbers  no  Pagan  rites  affect : 
But  one  recalcitrating  sect, 

Dog-like  returning  to  its  spew  ; 

Bestowing  an  apostate's  name 

On  Rome's  sworn  enemy — and  now, 
False  to  its  Reformation  vow. 

Joins  hands  in  fellowship  with  shame. 

Thus  branded,  it  were  vain  to  shrink 
As  one  in  union  not  o'er-fond, 
Though  coupled  in  a  cognate  bond 

Like  vowels  in  a  diphthong  link. 


LX. 


In  Papal  dominance  a  Ghoul ! 
Devitalizing  men  !  yet  feigned 
A  Christ-like  love  of  them,  but  reigned 

With  Bismarck  blood-and-iron  rule. 

Fiend  of  the  Octopodise  ! 

With  cupping  tentacles  outspread, 
By  which  all  forms  of  thrift  were  bled  : 

ARCH-ENEMY  OF  LIBERTY. 

Resultant  of  an  age,  amiss 

In  barbarous  deed  and  bestial  sin  : 
The  man  without — the  brute  within, 

Made  it  the  curse  it  was  and  is. 


The  spirit's  unseen  universe 

Throngs  with  the  souls  this  Church  sent  there 
Through  paths  of  anguish  and  despair, 

And  blasted  with  its  Christian  curse. 

92 


Of  victims  manifold,  that  were 

To  literal  "  jaws  of  darkness  "  thrown, 
To-day  the  oubliette-hinge's  groan 

Echoes  their  agonized  demur. 

Murder  its  ceremonial  haunts 
In  Torture's  screech  of  agony, 
The  moans  of  martyrs — these  should  be 

The  miserere  of  its  chants. 

Its  litanies,  a  dismal  rune 

Of  sobs  and  plaints,  and  harrowing  prayer, 
Screams  and  mad  laughter  of  despair, 

Blood-spattered  fiend  from  cowl  to  shoon  ; 

Conjoined  with  shriek  from  Boot  and  Flame, 
Heart-rending  cries  from  Rack  and  Wheel, 
The  Virgin's  grim  embrace  of  steel, 

Mercies  invoked  in  Christ's  dear  name. 

Blood,  sacramental  robes  impests  ! 

Blood  taints  the  Palliums,  Albs  and  Stoles ! 

Blood  on  the  grimed  anathemaed  souls 
Of  those  who  wrought  its  fell-behests  ! 

93 


LXI. 

Never  to  selfish  means  averse, 
With  sombre  interests  ever  rife, 
The  Incubus  of  Higher  Life, 

And  Degradation's  foster-nurse  ; 

How  long  will  it  have  force  to  flaunt 
Sham  potencies  for  souls  that  grieve  ? 
How  long  will  cultured  minds  believe 

Its  doctrine's  consecrated  cant  ? 

Or  its  Religion — miscalled  "  true  " — 
That  once  bound  feudal  earth  in  gyves 
Of  proof-armed  ignorance,  and  strives 

To  rivet  shattered  mail  anew ; 

Restoring  mediaeval  times  : 

And  retrogressive  horrors  come  ! 
With  fire-and-fagot  martyrdom, 

As  holy  sanctifying  crimes. 

94 


Reviving  days  of  Heretics, 

To  Torquemada  tortures  forced : 
And  blameless  souls  a  holocaust, 

Flaring  the  dark,  like  flaming  ricks. 


LXII. 

Days  which  posterity  still  mourns, 
When  men  by  toxic  faith  were  crazed, 
And  like  to  torches  Hebrews  blazed, 

And  witches  crackled,  too,  like  thorns. 

Decades  when  knowledge  lay  inert, 

Cadaveric  :  Ignorance  its  pall ; 

When  God  was  naught  and  Church  was  all ; 
Eras  of  Pestilence  and  Dirt ; 

Ages  of  Priestcraft's  shallow  tilth, 
With  harvests  of  exuberant  crime, 
Of  public  foulness,  private  grime  : 

Epochs  of  frailty,  faith  and  filth. 

95 


A  state  which  reechy  monks  advance 
To  quite  a  sanctifying  grade  : 
A  close  conforming  grime  displayed 

To  Dirt's  canonic  ordinance. 


LXIII. 

Dare  not  its  creed  or  ritual  blame, 
Or  go  anathamaed  to  thy  death, 
Make  "  I  believe  "  thy  shibboleth 

Or,  like  a  human  fagot,  flame. 

Its  virus-cup  drank  to  the  lees, 

Its  ruthless  grasp  of  simple  minds, 
Reason  debauched — the  sight  it  blinds 

With  cowls  of  inane  sanctities, 

And  law  of  pious-fraud  controls, 

Fearless  of  God  whom  it  blasphemes, 
As  sanctifying  worthless  schemes 

Of  nostrum-rites,  for  curing  souls. 

96 


Oh  !  woeful  realms  bereft  of  joys 

That  Freedom  brings,  and  Freemen  prize 
Take  heed  !  for  thus  Cassandra-wise 

They  warn  "these  times"  unheeding  Troys. 


LXIV. 

In  its  subjection,  Races  die 

Anaemic  from  degeneracies ; 

Of  cruel  bonds  and  tyrannies 
Ever  the  unscrupulous  ally. 

Nations  with  vertebrate  power  bent 
To  shore  this  tottering  faith  of  Rome, 
Losing  dynastic  force,  become 

Decadent  empires,  doomed  and  spent. 

Clairvoyant ! — why  should  I  be  dumb, 
Though  giving  to  the  world,  unsought, 
The  visions  of  a  sight  o'erwrought, 

The  foregleams  of  results  to  come? 

97 


Behold  their  destiny  in  this  ! 

Faction  and  Feud,  the  paupered  Purse, 

Cabal,  Sedition's  secret  curse, 
Retributive  as  Nemesis. 

Imposture  yielding  bitter  fruits  ! 
Corruption,  Treason,  Fiscal  Cheats, 
Riots,  Rebellions,  Wars,  Defeats, 

Acting  as  Parcse  substitutes. 

Vile  forms  of  tyranny  abide, 

Ruled  by  the  gutter  and  the  ditch — 
Nobles,  in  worthless  titles  rich, 

But  beggars  in  all  else  beside. 

Hordes  of  recanting  votaries,  lust 

For  impious  act ;  their  Priests  they  nag, 
Spit  on  their  ivory  Christs,  and  drag 

The  Agnus  Dei  in  the  dust. 

Church  pageant  naught  but  insult  meets, 
In  loathsome  missiles  Mobs  delight, 
Its  pomp  reduced  to  fearful  plight 

By  ordure  from  the  reeking  streets. 


And  nameless  horrors  still  to  be, 

When  Law  lies  dead,  and  License  raves, 
And  o'er  their  desolation  waves 

The  baleful  flag  of  Anarchy  ; 

While  through  a  still-pursuing  fate, 

Which  their  retrenched  puissance  saps, 
To  debile  impotency  lapse 

As  Powers  effete  or  inchoate, 

Which  to  Oblivion  recede, 

And  fossiled  in  the  Ages'  drifts 
Lie  hidden,  'till  some  Future  lifts 

Their  Past,  to  heirs  of  saner  creed. 

Without,  perchance — and  who  were  loath  ?- 
Supernal  Power  designs  to  keep 
The  rotting  faith,  a  midden-heap 

For  Liberty's  intenser  growth  ? 

A  richer  compost  could  not  be 

Than  offal  which  has  martyred  man 
Since  Orthodoxy's  flux  began — 

Sewage  of  Mariolatry. 

99 


LXV. 

Why  not  to  Thammuz  cult  resigned 
And  not  to  this,  so  modern  crude  ? 
An  Adonean  pulchritude 

A  likelier  "  fetch  v  for  womankind, 

Though  men  might  not  be  of  the  host 
Who  worship  Mary  !  Mary's  fame 
Was  polyandric,  and  became 

Polygamous  with  man  and  ghost. 

s 

Her  sex's  mind,  with  aptness  scored, 
Proves  vantage  for  the  priestly  guild 
A  bigot-base  on  which  to  build 

The  superstructure  of  a  fraud. 

Well  knowing  this,  and  the  effect, 
The  female  child  is  put  in  train, 
For  stamping  on  its  plastic  brain, 

Life-long  delusions  of  the  sect. 


For  she  is  mother  of  the  race, 

And  at  her  knees  the  man-child  taught 
A  false  belief — so  cunning-fraught, 

Even  wiser  years  may  not  efface. 

Thus  myriad  mother,  legioned  priest, 
Pervert  the  child-world's  plastic  mind 
With  fabricated  facts  which  blind, 

Maturity  till  life  has  ceased. 

And  thus  a  propaganda  schemed, 
For  sowing  holy  tares  broadcast : 
A  Devil's  harvest,  far  more  vast 

Than  Pope  or  Cardinal  e'er  dreamed. 


LXVI. 

A  faith  with  Orthodoxy  shod, 

Tramples  all  doubt,  nor  leaves  intact 
Man's  warder,  Reason ;  thus,  in  fact, 

In  routing  that,  assails  his  God  ; 

101 


The  True  God  of  the  inner  man, 
The  spiritual  essence,  made 
His  guard,  his  guide,  his  helpful  aid, 

Throughout  his  being's  mortal  span. 

Its  record  never  can  appease 

The  kindly  heart's  instinctive  hate ; 
Its  joy  in  cruelty,  innate, 

The  curse  of  all  Hierarchies. 

The  kindliest  nature  will  rebel ! 
Mercy,  with  Fury-rage  beset, 
Making  the  tenderest  hearts  regret 

That  for  its  dole  there  is  no  hell. 


Its  juggling  priests,  its  tonsured  knaves, 
Degrade  the  man  to  human  brute, 
And,  armed  with  power  absolute, 

Convert  their  dupes  to  abject  slaves. 


102 


LXVII. 

With  ignorance  the  septic  root 
Of  sacerdotal  rule  :  from  whence 
Issues  decretal,  "abstinence" 

•From  "  knowledge,"  and  its  "  mystic  fruit " — 

Establishing  a  world-wide  thrall, 
Convinced,  if  mankind  disobey, 
Nourished  by  "  fruit  forbidden  " — THEY, 

Not  contumacious  man,  must  fall. 

For  Knowledge,  thus  enlightening  man, 
Would  make  their  guerdon  dearly  earned, 
Their  vicious  purpose  seen  and  spurned, 

Spoiling  their  Scarlet-Woman  plan. 

To  issues  of  their  teachings  blind 

Throughout  their  miscalled  Holy  See  : 
The  embodiment  of  tyranny 

That  dwarfs  the  Tarquins  of  mankind. 

103 


But  when  the  dens  and  dives  and  stews 
Know  their  abuse,  with  slaughter  lusts 
They'll  make  reprisal  holocausts 

Cry  quits  with  Saint  Bartholomews. 

They  know  not  yet  the  how  or  when 
Till  freedom  points  the  time  and  path, 
And  they  arise  in  hideous  wrath, 

Like  maw  and  claw  from  wild-beast  den. 


LXVIII. 

'Twixt  what  is  known  and  preached,  a  schism  ; 

And  mythos  made  to  mask  as  Truth. 

They  know  God's  attributes  forsooth, 
Whose  mental  state  is  sciolism  ! 

The  lust  of  sordidness  their  dower, 

The  mammon  muck-rakes  of  the  earth  ; 
The  human  soul  of  trivial  worth, 

To  harpagons  of  wealth  and  power. 

104 


Their  craft  is  subtle,  vulpine,  dark. 

For  knowledge  there  is  no  advance ; 

But  swarming  hordes  of  ignorants 
Prove  quarry  for  the  Hierarch. 

Of  dismal  Superstitions,  worst 

Of  all,  infecting  souls  with  dread  : 
Crime  to  the  heart,  Crime  to  the  head 

Denounced,  condemned,  proscribed,  accurst. 


LXIX. 

Beliefs  which  pure  ideals  smirch, 
Traditions  which  proved  facts  belie, 
And  rites  of  purest  pagan  dye, 

Embodied  as  a  Holy  Church  ; 

All  honesty  in  fable  sunk, 

And  chicane  gospel-script  o'erlaid 
With  texts  its  iron  rule  to  aid  ; 

Mere  forgeries  of  the  lying  monk. 

105 


They  plagiarized  the  classic  trick 

Of  heroes  apotheosized, 

Honored  with  holy  shrines,  and  prized 
As  Gods  parthenogenetic. 

Their  holy  truths,  mere  drama,  spiced 
With  flavors  of  the  mummied  past, 
God  after  God  enhanced  the  cast, 

The  plot,  denouemented  with  Christ. 

Its  rites  exalt  not,  but  deprave  ; 

It  breeds  a  stolid,  brainless  brood  ; 

Few  of  the  virtues  of  the  good, 
But  all  the  vices  of  the  slave. 


LXX. 

The  poor,  the  humble  sons  of  toil, 
The  lowly-born,  its  prop  and  stay ; 
A  cowled  and  tonsured  caste  betray, 

And  hold  in  durance  as  their  spoil. 

106 


Its  power,  the  active  cause  and  chief 
Of  all  their  ills  of  want  and  crime; 
Besetting  Ignorance  in  time 

Coherent  with  pervert  belief. 

Dogma-obsessioned  hordes  that  feast 
On  gospel-garbage  live  and  die, 
The  victims  of  an  impious  lie, 

Dupes  of  a  Church,  its  creed  and  priest ; 

Their  hate  of  slavery  subdued 
By  their  God-vicars  self-ordained, 
Their  mental  badge  of  slave  retained 

And  fostered  by  rank  hebetude. 

More  barbarous  than  Turanian  Huns, 
Though  dwelling  in  instructive  light, 
They  still  remain,  in  its  despite, 

As  brainless  as  chloride  nuns. 

Disciples  these  in  priest-controls, 
Whom  cloistral  idleness  relieves 
From  worldly  lure  ;  yet  who  believes 

Their  bodies  convents  of  pure  souls  ? 

107 


LXXI. 

Born,  bred  and  reared  in  ignorance, 
Struggle  for  higher-life  suppressed  ; 
Delights  of  knowledge  scorned,  unguessed, 

At  war  with  culture — a  I 'entrance  ; 

In  fable  from  their  cradles  steeped, 
And  forgeries  of  ages  past, 
Foes  of  all  useful  doctrine  classed 

With  proven  fact,  by  Science  reaped  ; 

Their  search  for  Truth  of  no  avail ! 

She  dwells  not  in  the  wells  defiled 

By  Superstition  ;  still  beguiled, 
Though  knowledge  holds  the  Holy  Grail. 

Their  burdens  all  life's  worth  enthrall ! 

To  their  real  source  of  suffering,  blind ; 

Ever  pursuing  hope,  to  find 
A  heart-ache  at  the  core  of  all. 

108 


For  such  must  life  with  grief  abound  ? 

Seeking  its  gold  and  gath'ring  dross, 

Bearing  in  poverty  their  cross, 
With  thorns  their  toil-worn  foreheads  crowned  ? 

Reason  debauched  and  long  adust, 

The  burthen  of  their  faith  abides, 

And  their  most  worshipped,  guards  and  guides, 
Fooling  their  simple,  patient  trust. 

Thus  ever  doomed  to  haunt  the  prison, 
The  sepulchre  of  buried  Truth, 
With  fruitless  search  and  useless  ruth  : 

The  tomb  is  there  !  but  Truth  has  risen. 


LXXII. 

Reared  in  the  blasphemies  of  Faith, 
'Gainst  reasoning  sense  a  war  is  waged, 
Their  earthly  misery  assuaged 

By  that  true  Mercy  men  call  Death. 

109 


Earth  has  lost  all  delight  and  lure, 
Misfortune's  flood  they  fail  to  stem, 
The  world  is  weariness  to  them, 

"  Life  is  disease  and  Death  the  cure.'' 

To  pain  no  mitigating  pause, 
Nor  to  their  weariness  repose, 
Until  upon  their  misery  close 

The  tomb's  inexorable  doors. 

To  their  well-being  most  unwise, 
Soddened  in  reek  of  ignorance  ; 
Their  hells  endured,  as  in  advance 

Of  heirship  of  a  Paradise. 

Weak  bondsmen  to  the  lying  lip  ! 

Boeotians,  duped  by  spurious  fears  ! 

To  them  this  "  Righteousness  "  appears- 
Poor  helots  of  prelatic  whip  ! 

Their  fetters  neither  gall  nor  wound  ; 
Proud  of  the  shackles  that  they  wear, 
Are  they  less  slaves  because  they  bear 

Their  vassal  chains  by  Faith  festooned  ? 

no 


Truth's  attar'd  incense  they  love  not ! 
But,  like  the  perfume-loathing  cur, 
Slink  from  it  with  a  dread  demur, 

But  yet  will  reek  with  carrion-rot. 

They  see  a  falsehood  richly  shrined, 
Nor  doubt  it  truth,  and  do  not  dare 
To  lift  the  Isis  veil,  and  stare 

Wild-eyed  at  fraud  that  lies  behind. 

Will  trust  like  theirs  ne'er  be  outworn  ? 

Their  fatal  folly  never  cease  ? 

Leaving,  like  silly  sheep,  their  fleece 
Ever  on  Cunning's  hedge  and  thorn  ? 


LXXIII. 

Are  these  not  sons  of  God  likewise  ? 
Is  Christ  the  only  one  who  died 
Disprized,  belied  and  crucified, 

Towards  Heaven  lifting  anguished  eyes? 


The  only  one,  in  agony, 

Whose  trembling  lips  in  protest  groaned, 
And  upward  lifted  head,  who  moaned, 

"My  God,  hast  Thou  forsaken  me?" 

The  only  ones,  thorn-crowned-deviced, 
Nail-pierced  by  ingrates,  lies  and  loss, 
Unsolaced  on  their  secret  cross, 

Who  bear  the  stigmata  of  Christ  ? 

Or  was  He  but  the  type  of  all, 

In  life's  probation,  who  have  found 
Spear-thrusts,  in  crucifixions  bound, 

And  drank  its  hyssop  and  its  gall? 

True  liegemen !  whom  no  wrongs  provoke, 
By  spiritual  sway  enthralled, 
And  by  tyrannic-temporal  galled : 

Thus  burthened  with  a  double  yoke  ; 

In  sacerdotal  bondage  crushed, 

Their  sense  of  vital  wrong  unstirred, 
The  voice  of  their  despair  unheard, 

In  death's  eternal  coma  hushed. 


There  is  no  chance  for  Freedom's  aid, 
For  minds  made  leprous  by  foul  creeds ; 
There  is  no  refuge  for  their  needs, 

Save  from  the  mattock  and  the  spade. 


LXXIV. 

Most  human  institutions  rest 

On  Force ;  therefore  by  force  alone 
Can  they  be  wrecked  and  overthrown, 

And  "Bad"  supplanted  by  the  "Best" 

Not  till  awakened  man  despairs 
Of  Fabian  methods,  and  essays 
Righting  the  vicious  wrong,  and  brays 

The  priesthood  at  the  altar-stairs  ; 

Or,  roused  to  a  consuming  ire, 
Dooms  to  a  shapeless  ruin  all 
Tokens  of  their  pernicious  thrall, 

With  cyclone  razzias  of  fire  ; 

113 


And  where  its  trickster  shrines  have  been 
And  flourished  in  malefic  might, 
No  stone  on  stone  to  mark  the  sight, 

Naught  but  chaotic  ruin  seen  ; 

While  Faith,  Rite,  Creed  and  Dogma  fall, 
Swept  to  some  Hinnom's  vague  abysm, 
With  all  their  pious  Ku-Kluxism, 

Like  sweepings  of  a  Kaffir-kraal — 

Careless  of  what  such  deeds  forebode ! 
Though  crucial  wars  leave  lands  forlorn, 
Often,  through  sorrow,  good  is  born, 

And  true  reforms  achieved  in  blood. 

Better  the  Nation  win  the  name 
Agnostic  rather  than  of  Sect 
Of  tainted  creed,  with  fraud-defect, 

And  doomed  to  be  the  era's  shame. 

Destined  to  fall  in  cognate  line 
With  like  delusions  of  the  race, 
And  totter  from  its  worthless  base, 

Like  by-gone  Faiths  once  held  Divine. 
\         114 


Though  Christ  were  truly  nailed  to  cross, 
Redeeming  man  from  literal  hell 
(Arrant  untruth),  yet  'twere  not  well 

The  fable  lack  suggestive  force. 

A  legend  of  the  Sanskrit  brand, 
Known  to  the  earlier  world  to  be 
A  myth  of  Heliolatry, 

Before  it  cursed  this  Western  land 

As  Christian  faith,  the  scourge  and  bane 
Of  civil  Liberty,  and  binds 
The  weazen  hearts  and  shallow  minds 

Of  brainless  bigots  in  its  train. 

If  crucifixion  once  sufficed, 

In  fable,  to  redeem  mankind, 

A  freedom-loving  race  might  find 
Its  guerdon  in  enacting  Christ. 

****** 
Once  from  the  cross,  and  seeming  dead, 

Scorning  sepulchral  bonds  to  rise 

Immortal  from  the  sacrifice, 
With  glory's  nimbus  garlanded, 


LXXV. 

The  mills  of  God  may  slowly  grind, 
But  yet  they  grind  austerely  fine, 
For  those  who  check  a  gift  divine, 

Dwarfing  the  Reason  of  mankind. 

For  that  is  His  most  precious  gift 
To  man,  whereby  he  kills  or  quells 
Misdoing  brute  that  in  him  dwells, 

Scornful  of  aid  from  priestly  shrift. 

Atonement  must  be  made  for  sin  ! 
Punition  not  as  man-devised, 
A  torment  not  exteriorized  ! 

OUR  HEAVENS    AND  HELLS    ARE    BORNE  WITHIN. 


They  need  not  dread  a  God  austere, 
Nor  tremble  at  THE  GREAT  ASSIZE  ! 
That's  scheduled  with  more  potent  lies  : 

They'll  have  their  soul's  remorse  to  fear. 

116 


LXXVI. 

Beyond  what  carnate  sense  conceives, 
Modes  of  sensation  may  prevail — 
In  that  new  state  beyond  the  veil, 

Where  mind  its  discipline  achieves, 

There  the  discarnate  soul  may  find 
Content  supreme,  or  pain  for  sin, 
Cognate  with  evil  held  within  ; 

Its  bliss  or  torment — states  of  mind. 

And  in  progression  feel  the  spell 
Of  good  abjured  and  evil  wrought ; 
The  life-renewed,  with  anguish  fraught 

Its  Immortality,  its  Hell ! 

Death  ends  not  sorrow  nor  distress, 
Nor  passions  that  delight,  yet  cloy. 
Nor  will  it  in  the  grave  enjoy 

Nirwana's  peace  of  nothingness  ; 

117 


No  sackcloth-shrift  beyond  the  grave ! 

No  hell  for  sin's  purgation  there  ! 

But  sorrow  counterfeits  despair, 
"  For  from  ourselves  no  Christ  can  save." 


LXXVII. 

Strange !  that  on  Freedom's  soil  should  be 
A  wrong  so  gross,  and  not  create 
A  protest  fierce,  articulate, 

Against  this  alien  tyranny. 

For  Freedom's  Minster  should  be  purged, 
Its  evil-workers  exorcised, 
As  from  the  Zion  temple  Christ 

The  sordid  money-changers  scourged. 

All  teaching  is  a  scheme  o'erwrought ! 

What  strength  of  nutriment  in  Schools 

Diluted  by  the  flood  of  fools, 
As  affluent  to  knowledge  taught  ? 

118 


Its  rule,  the  metaphoric  pen, 

Where  wallow  in  their  foul  mischance 
The  herds  transformed  by  Ignorance, 

THE  CIRCE  OF  THE  SOULS  OF  MEN. 


LXXVIII. 

Its  influence  in  government 
Is  felt  in  evil ;  chiefly  here. 
Freemen  have  its  control  to  fear  : 

A  mental-helotry  its  bent. 

Its  secret  agencies  forestall 

All  wholesome  forms  of  civic  rules  ; 

In  City  Councils,  Public  Schools, 
And  every  Board  Municipal. 

Through  Club  and  College  permeates 
Its  subtle  tampering,  unrelaxed 
In  all  the  fundamental  acts, 

Forming  the  functionings  of  States. 

119 


Congress,  Convention,  Bar  and  Bench, 
All  courts  Judicial,  witness-box, 
Grand  Juries  and  the  prisoner-docks — 

On  these  its  crafty-workings  trench. 

By  germs  of  Jesuit-virus  strewn, 
Through  all  decretal  syndicates — 
Few  of  this  Wardenry  of  States 

Against  the  toxic  taint  immune  ! 

Army  and  Navy,  every  branch 
Embodies  a  confederate  band  ; 
Imperilling  that  loyal  stand, 

No  discipline  can  render  staunch 

In  times  of  Peril  to  the  frame 
Of  constitutional  government : 
A  Church's  empire  imminent, 

To  the  Republic's  fame  and  name. 


LXXIX. 

Conditions  which  await  result 

Expected,  if  not  preordained  ! 

This  New- World-Power  possessed,  maintained 
A  stronghold  of  the  Papal  Cult ! 

God's  Vicar  Vaticaned  in  Rome, 
Veridic  Press-reports  declare, 
Intends  (for  failing  crops  elsewhere) 

To  make  this  land  "  His  Harvest  Home  "  ! 

So  sweetly  tolerant  we  appear 

Of  the  designing  priestly  league, 

So  listless  of  this  Church-intrigue 
To  root  its  Ritualism  here, 

Such  parasites  to  Papal  force  ! 

So  blind  to  its  most  plain  intent ! 

Till  brought  (its  victim)  to  lament 
Imperilled  Freedom — or  its  loss — 

121 


To  be  restored  by  civil  war, 

And  all  its  soul-revolting  scenes  ; 
With  supplemental  grewsome  means, 

That  lack  the  warranty  of  law. 

The  Public  voice  bestows  no  stress 
In  its  rebuke  of  these  Church-pacts, 
Perchance  discredits  them  as  facts  ; 

Or  has  the  Pope  dragooned  the  Press  ? 


LXXX. 

Its  fiat  fetters  noblest  minds, 
Palsies  the  weak  to  impotence, 
Blunts  the  keen  edge  of  common-sense, 

With  those  whom  fallacy  still  binds. 

While  from  the  mold  of  crumbling  creeds, 
A  fungoid  growth  of  dogma  springs ; 
Such  noxious  and  unwholesome  things 

As  cryptal  gloom  of  error  breeds. 


The  birthright  of  the  Poor  its  prey, 
The  crucifix  becomes  a  pledge 
Of  their  enslavement,  fatal  badge  ! 

Human  dumb-beasts  of  burden  they! 

Discipled  criminals  in  time, 

Infesting  gutters,  glutting  slums, 
Such  are  their  choice  elysiums, 

Fetid  with  moral  sludge  and  slime. 

For  ignorance  makes  crooked  the  soul, 
Misshape  concordant  moulds  the  mind  ; 
In  one  distortion  both  combined, 

Thus  apt  for  criminal  control. 

And  there  as  foul  diseases  bide, 

And  like  to  beasts  of  prey  from  thence, 
Issue  at  times  a  Pestilence : 

Bubonic  plague  personified. 

When  Mob-law  civic  rule  assails, 

Riot  from  thence  its  garbage  spews  ; 
The  slough  and  wallow  of  the  stews, 

And  excrete  of  cloacal  jails. 

123 


In  haunts  of  vice  they  dwell  at  ease, 
But  swarm  from  their  mephitic  pens, 
From  Degradation's  hideous  dens, 

As  Democratic  potencies. 

Thus  from  this  source  results  are  due 
In  monstrous  tyrannies  of  ill : 
The  sovereign  and  despotic  will 

Of  gutter,  brothel,  jail  and  stew. 

Crass  ignorance  and  roguery  stand 
As  bulwark  to  the  cleansing  bent 
Of  every  favored  movement,  meant 

For  foulness,  lustrumed  from  the  land. 


LXXXI. 

Banality  of  Franchise  !  when 

In  ballot-power  true  manhood's  made 
Coequal  with  this  felon-grade, 

The  brutehood  of  the  Dive  and  Den. 

124 


Briarean  Mob  !  of  arms  no  lack, 

But  brains  proportioned  to  its  mood, 
In  ratio  of  amount  for  good, 

As  Falstaff's  bread  to  Falstaff's  sack. 

Will  statesmen  long  condone  th'  abuse 
Of  Faction's  glozing  efforts,  made 
To  use  these  colleagues,  and  to  raid 

The  public  purse  for  private  use  ? 

Results  denounced,  condemned,  deplored, 
The  age  beholding  them,  aghast 
At  crime  illimitably  vast : 

All  office  honey-combed  with  fraud. 

A  curse  to  county,  town,  and  state : 

Ballot  debauched,  the  franchise  scorned, 
By  rabble  from  the  slums  suborned, 

Debasing  the  electorate. 

Hence  "sham  majority"  achieves 

A  priestly  project :  an  intent 

To  yield  a  City's  government 
As  spoil  to  felons,  roughs  and  thieves. 

125 


Thus  hoarded  funds  of  Peter's  Pence 

In  amplitude  expand,  and  serve 

As  sinews  of  religious  verve, 
In  cultivating  Ignorance. 

Fair  field  of  sacerdotal  toil ! 

A    baneful    swamp,    ploughed,    drained    and 
ditched, 

And  by  a  midden-cult  enriched, 
Of  Crime,  becomes  a  fecund  soil. 


LXXXII. 

Let  mourning  edge  all  civic  rolls, 
For  honest-rule  is  dead  and  cold, 
Corruption  henceforth  will  uphold 

The  lying  verdict  of  the  Polls. 

For  through  the  cities'  dens  and  dives, 
And  by  their  scoundrel-populace, 
This  buckramed  danger  and  disgrace, 

This  odium  of  the  nation,  thrives. 

126 


'Twixt  Church  design  and  this,  no  schism  ! 
In  flexile  bonds  its  conscience  writhes  : 
'Tis  pleasant  penance,  taking  tithes 

From  Jubilees  of  scoundrelism. 

Religion-named  !  yet  it  includes 

Methods  political,  to  school 

Its  priestly  agencies,  to  rule 
Triumphant  blockhead-multitudes. 

Hence  Office  with  the  knave  is  rife, 
And  pensioned  from  the  cities'  wealth, 
Past-masters  in  the  schemes  of  stealth  : 

The  official  curse  of  civic  life. 

Trusting  and  credent  unto  death, 
Fanatic  in  devotion,  none 
Can  formulate  what  may  be  done, 

Through  impulse  of  perfervid  faith. 

Their  secret  ways  defying  search, 
Officials  made  of  slum-born  rogues, 
Whose  flood  of  spoil  no  doubt  embogues 

The  coffers  of  the  Holy  Church. 

127 


True  to  the  law  of  Pedigree, 

Of  brutish  stock  the  brute  is  born : 

The  Church,  cold-blooded,  voids  its  spawn, 

These,  its  reptilian  progeny. 

They  govern  th'  exploited  town, 

Who  should  in  jails  find  penal  work, 
Yet  in  whose  venal  shadow  lurk 

The  cassock  and  the  tonsured  crown. 

To  no  corrupting  means  averse, 
Virtue  they  slur,  not  vice  decry  ; 
Their  propaganda  financed  by 

The  lootage  of  the  Public  Purse. 


LXXXIII. 

Amid  the  wrongs  which  earth  have  cursed, 

Degrading  God,  enslaving  man, 

Since  Creed  was  schemed  and  Fraud  began, 
This  Holy  Church  is  wholly  worst. 

128 


Thearchic  insolence,  the  base 

On  which  is  reared  the  chartered  crime, 
Despotic  since  its  earliest  prime, 

The  bold  debaucher  of  the  race. 

Its  Christianity  has  stood 

As  if  with  human  misery  charmed, 
And,  with  its  cruel  tenets  armed, 

Proclaimed  the  wickedness  of  Good  ; 

And  shed  more  blood,  wrought  more  distress, 
Than  all  its  cognate  pagan  creeds 
Combined,  and  sown  its  thorny  seeds, 

Brambling  the  earth  with  wretchedness. 

There's  not  within  the  planet's  pale 
Barbaric  spot  or  culture-graced 
On  which  a  Church  has  not  been  placed 

Or  where  its  cult  does  not  avail. 

Each  point  a  strategist  might  deem 

Expedient  in  a  war-campaign 

To  hold  intact  and  to  retain 
For  a  choice  subjugating  scheme. 

129 


To  found  in  perpetuity, 

The  synonym  of  human  ill, 

This  Church  a  clerical  Bastille 
Of  manacled  humanity. 

Has  Heaven  a  God  supreme  and  wise 
Who  fails  the  wrongs  of  men  to  curb  ? 
No  horrors  of  His  earth  disturb 

The  calm  of  His  unpitying  skies. 

Once  blasphemy  its  climax  gained 

When  for  a  thousand  years,  aye,  more, 
This  Church  presumed  to  God  ignore, 

Usurped  His  throne  and  ruled  and  reigned ; 

Fouled  earth  with  hieratic  lust, 
Where  crime  and  cruelty  abode, 
Making  the  life  that  God  bestowed 

Of  lesser  value  than  the  dust ; 

By  massacres  purveying  death, 

Goodness  impeached  by  rampant  Crime, 
With  reason  strangled  in  the  slime 

And  sputa  of  a  viscid  Faith  ; 

130 


Engendered  Hate  and  stifled  Mirth, 
Ranked  Cruelties  as  special  arts, 
Choked  tearful  Pity,  hardened  hearts, 

And  banished  Mercy  from  the  earth  ; 

Encouraged  Ignorance  and  spurned 

Skilled  Knowledge  from  its  hostile  path, 
Sworn  foe  of  Progress,  venting  wrath 

On  all  that  bore  the  stamp  of  learned; 

* 

Embittered  friends,  Affections  killed, 
Poisoned  the  Truth,  at  Virtue  sneered, 
Oppressed  the  Poor,  at  Misery  jeered, 

And  homes  with  hate  dissension  filled  ; 

For  ages  made  its  realms  a  morgue 
With  Rack  and  Stake  and  Borgia's  art, 
And  every  sin  on  its  foul  heart 

Named  in  Jehovah's  Decalogue. 

'Tis  no  religion,  but  a  scheme — 

A  hybrid  cross  'twixt  Creed  and  Greed, 
A  mongrel  plan  designed  to  lead, 

In  this  fool-world,  to  rule  supreme. 


If  e'er  its  ignorants  should  swell 
To  larger  legions  of  its  cult, 
Then  Church  Domdaniel  the  result, 

And  this  Fool's  Paradise,  a  Hell. 

The  legend  of  the  Argonauts 
Finds  its  revival  in  this  age  : 
These  holy  Corsairs  cruise  and  rage 

For  plunder  in  all  earthly  ports. 

An  Argoan  quest  that  does  not  cease, 
A  papal  Jason  guides  the  search, 
All  lands  a  Colchis  for  their  Church, 

Shearing  from  fools  the  Golden  Fleece. 


LXXXIV. 

A  true  unfktioned  Upas-tree  ! 
Fecund  as  Banyan,  every  branch 
Sends  down  contributories  staunch, 

Shadowing  human  Liberty. 

132 


Shall  it,  in  ever-spreading  girth, 
Extend  its  darkness-loving  might, 
And  in  the  Optimist's  despite, 

Crowd  Freedom  from  benighted  earth? 

A  guild  which  first  its  dupes  depraves 
Through  fear  and  ignorance,  then  rules 
To  make  of  them  the  bigot  fools, 

The  easier  to  convert  to  slaves  ; 

The  truths  of  Science,  scorned,  denied  ; 

Progress  restrained  with  bigot  grip  ; 

The  eyes  pnt  out  of  Scholarship, 
Faith  blessed,  ind  knowledge  crucified. 

Now  with  decrepit  age  infirm, 

Yet  Cunning  holds  the  chair  of  force : 
'Twixt  Pride  and  Power  no  sure  divorce, 

Till  Pious  Fraud  has  reached  its  term. 

Yet  with  its  Machiavelian  trait, 

To  fellowship  with  reasoning  mind, 
To  wholesome  freedom  of  mankind, 

A  foe  no  less  inveterate. 

133 


When  triple-crowned,  enthroned  it  sat, 

Its  cruel  craft  a  thing  to  dread, 

But  now  the  Lion's  lordly  tread 
Gives  place  to  crawl  of  mousing  cat  ; 

Yet  would  with  royal  prestige  shine, 
The  simple,  with  mock  sceptre,  fool, 
Imposture  as  the  means  to  rule, 

Falsehood  and  Fraud  its  Right  Divine. 

With  Crozier,  Cross  and  Pastoral  Staff, 
Mitre,  Biretta,  Triple-Crown, 
Pallium,  Soutane,  Stole  and  Gown, 

No  King's  regalia  counts  the  half ; 

High  on  the  Hierarchal  perch, 

Papa  becomes  a  Pontifex  ; 

And  red-robed  Cardinals  annex 
Titles  as  Princes  of  The  Church  ; 

Red,  their  escutcheon-color  made 

In  memory  of  those  days  of  yore 

When  Church  was  lewdly  Poped,  and  wore 
The  scarlet  garb  of  Babylon's  Jade  ; 

134 


In  fact,  with  sumptuous  tailoring, 
With  Rosary,  Cross  and  Crucifix, 
With  Agnus  Dei,  Pax  and  Pyx, 

Out-gewgaws  any  Laic  King. 


LXXXV. 

But  why  its  sombre  pomp  rehearse  ? 

Processioned  priests  and  Acolytes, 

Holy-buffoonery's  delights, 
Past-masters  of  exuberant  Farce  ; 

Such  gauds  the  TEACHER'S  spirit  mocks 
By  earth-life  of  the  pauper  grade 
The  Holy  Mendicant  has  made 

The  WEALTHY  priest — a  paradox. 

The  Poor,  the  Meek,  the  Lowly  Ones — 
Was  not  the  Christ  of  these  ?  did  not 
His  earth-life  parallel  their  lot, 

The  simplest,  tenderest  of  God's  sons  ? 

135 


From  Him  in  sequence,  can  it  be 
There's  no  hiatus  in  the  line 
Apostolic,  from  the  Christ  benign, 

No  breach  of  continuity? 

Is  this  the  grain  of  that  meek  seed 
That  He  once  sowed,  or  that  it  bears, 
Yield  of  the  Devil's  worldly  tares, 

Strewn  for  Ambition,  Pride  and  Greed  ? 


LXXXVI. 

To  impotence  its  forces  trend  ; 

Wrenched  from  its  grasp  its  temporal  might ; 

While  on  its  record  rests  the  blight 
Of  execrations  without  end. 

What  is  man's  boasted  reason  worth, 
That  such  a  priestly-impious  plot 
Could  so  have  dazed  it,  and  have  not 

With  scornful  laughter  filled  the  earth  ? 

136 


When  will  the  wiser  world  be  ripe 
To  flout  its  God-degrading  plan  ? 
Never,  till  in  th'  evolving  man, 

The  brute  becomes  a  worn-out  type  ; 

Or  Time  its  monstrous  greed  betraysv 
And  Laity  scorns  Hierophants, 
Or  Knowledge,  Ignorance  supplants 

In  mankind's  every  ethnic  phase  ; 

Bearing  the  burden  of  its  crime 
As  the  decree  of  hidden  Fate  : 
To  rage  in  vain,  but  longer  wait 

The  slothful  force  of  halting  time. 


LXXXVII. 

What  factor  must  be  deemed  the  chief 
In  Man's  accepting  its  pretence 
Except  the  fool  in  permanence 

The  dupe  outcropping  in  Belief  ? 

137 


When  will  Oblivion's  curtain  drop 
Upon  this  drama-act  of  Fraud, 
And  knaves  and  witlings  cease  to  laud 

The  Actors  with  the  Claquer's  sop  ? 

Will  mankind  never  scale  its  worth, 
Bowed  in  assent  to  its  demands, 
Withhold  recoil  till  Doomsday  stands 

Upon  the  threshold  of  the  earth  ? 

Or  will  triumphant  Freedom  bring 
Rendition  of  this  vital  theme? 
Her  footfalls  to  the  rescue  seem 

Slower  than  leaden-footed  Spring. 

Protest  and  wrath  were  vainly  spent, 
Hatred,  derision,  scoff,  disdain  ; 
All  processes  save  Force  seem  vain, 

Slow  as  stalagmite  increment. 

Were  Time  but  to  an  hour  compressed, 
Or  to  an  instant  of  his  flight, 
That  I,  like  Islam's  Sultan,  might 

Of  magic  vision  be  possessed, 

138 


To  see  the  doom  that  now  it  braves, 

When  angered  Earth  in  wrath  will  bring 
Confusion  to  the  Unholy  Thing, 

And  joy  to  manumitted  slaves  ! 


LXXXVIII. 

When  Man,  attaining  perfect  birth, 
A  miracle  of  Wisdom,  stands 
In  wiser  world  and  happier  lands, 

"  Think  ye  he'll  find  this  faith  on  Earth  ?" 

It  cannot  be  his  curse  for  aye. 
Be  patient  still !  can  we  expect 
That  "  darkest  Afric  "  should  be  trekked 

Within  the  cycle  of  a  day  ? 

When  fools  from  folly  are  estranged, 
When  Egoism  forgets  itself, 
When  misers  give  the  Poor  their  pelf, 

The  Cynic  to  th'  Altruist  changed, 

139 


No  Priesthood  with  the  present  linked, 
No  monkish  drivel,  called  "  God's  word," 
But  like  the  inept  Dodo-bird, 

The  Christian  Pietist — extinct — 

Relicked  in  old  ancestral  schists, 
'Mid  fossilized  religious  thought — 
Of  these  (then  ages  past),  and  sought 

By  Lore-Palaeontologists. 


LXXXIX. 

Th'  Ideal  era  reached,  man  may 
Of  God  evolve  sublimer  view, 
An  ikon,  space-wide  from  the  True, 

Yet  not  the  lampoon  of  to-day. 

Instinctively  averse  to  tax 
His  Fancy  in  Belief's  behalf, 
And  give  of  God,  a  photograph 

With  priestly  blab  for  holy  facts. 

140 


Heirs  of  the  ages  will  revolt, 

Nor  prove  the  victims  of  a  scheme 
Strong  in  effrontery  :  a  theme 

For  Balaamites  to  dupe  the  Dolt. 


XC. 


Nature  is  slothfully  sublime 

In  all  progressive  acts  which  make 
Each  process  towards  attainment  take 

The  phase  of  Everlasting  Time. 

As  Nebulae,  in  rotary  stress 

Whirling,  condense  a  lucent  core 
To  a  sun-system,  adding  more 

To  the  weird  sum  of  countlessness  ; 

Till  solar  energy  first  tossed 
Its  giant  outpost-planets  far, 
Each  seeming  but  a  wand'ring  star 

Seeking  its  system,  strayed  or  lost, 

T/IT 


Till  orbital-career  begun, 

Through  laws  that  rule  etheric  space, 
.  Wheeling  in  satellitious  place 
About  the  central  magnet  Sun — 

The  mind-bewildering  events 

In  time,  since  smelted  Earth  was  hurl'd 

In  void,  an  incandescent  world : 
Plutonic  bubbling  continents; 

Ere  yet  the  vapored  globe  condensed 
Diluvial  rains,  and  mountain  sheds 
Poured  floods,  which  trenched  their  river-beds 

Through  channels,  obdurately  fenced, 

And  time  incalculable  clears 

Paths  for  their  onrush-way  to  go, 

And  unperturbed  at  last,  to  flow, 
Like  a  good  life  in  vale  of  years  ; 

And  the  crude  world's  depression  fills 
With  countless  affluents  like  these  ; 
Forming  the  crisp-foamed  shining  seas, 

Submerging  fossil-salted  hills 

142 


And  velds  ;  ere  Ichthyosauri  swum 
The  tepid  waters,  vapor-hazed  ; 
Or  Dinosaurian  Mammal  grazed 

Or  browsed  with  Megatherium  ; 

Ere  seismic  force  from  oozy  base 
Thrust  up  the  soaring  mountain  top 
To  altitudes  which  seem  to  prop 

The  stars,  and  shoulder  concave  space  ; 

Keeping  in  lonesomeness  of  sea, 
With  Solitude,  eternal  tryst ; 
Ere  verdured  deltas  oasised 

Its  impotent  sterility, 

Or  sea-holms,  in  their  tropic  trim, 
Basked  in  a  sylvan  flora  yield, 
While  the  grand  Ocean-Organ  pealed 

Anthem  in  storm,  in  calm  its  hymn  ; 

The  dateless  time  when  life  began, 
Or  when  the  vegetative  earth, 
After  the  reptile-shapes,  gave  birth 

To  higher  forms  of  brute — the  Man  ! 

143 


ALons  since  coral  zoophyte 

Built  through  the  Ocean's  briny  miles 
Lagooned  Atolls  and  palmy  isles, 

Destined  for  Cannibal  delight ; 

Till  reef,  shoal-ambushed,  stabs  and  hews 
Pirogues  and  Barks  to  foundering, 
And  seas  in  riot,  wreckage  fling 

Isle-ward,  the  Golgothas  of  Crews — 

So  Holy  Truth  is  never  spent, 
Nor  in  constructive  process  halts  ; 
In  self-assertion  foiling  False, 

She  too  of  Time  is  exigent. 


XCI. 

JEons  must  pass  ere  man  will  find 
His  true  creation  formed  complete  ; 
His  pious  fallacies,  effete, 

Limboed  in  strata  of  the  mind. 

144 


His  Gods,  Cult,  Creed,  Salvation  Plan, 
In  Culture's  drifts  found  stratified, 
As  with  the  Cave-Bear  bones  abide 

Tokens  of  rudimental  man. 


Triumph  of  Evolution  !  when, 
Compared  with  later  genesis, 
The  masterpiece  that  man  now  is, 

Mere  foetus  to  the  man  of  THEN. 


As  slowly  degradations  mark 
The  natural  process  of  decay, 
So  no  hysteric  force  will  sway 

The  passing  of  the  Hierarch, 

Sinking  to  legendary  gloom, 

As  all  man's  concepts — thought  to  be 

Solutions  of  his  destiny  ; 
Life's  solved  Enigma — and  its  doom. 


145 


XCII. 

Thus  Evolution  will  express 

For  this  "  Unparagoned,"  the  need 
That  heart  and  intellect  be  freed 

From  tyrannies  of  foolishness. 

Religion  is  not  Ethics,  nor 
Is  Dogma  discipline  designed 
For  healthy  betterment  of  mind, 

Nor  revamped  fable,  Holy  Law  ! 

Though  privileged  and  sordid  crime 
Betray  not  when  their  end's  to  be, 
Seeming  as  if  Eternity 

Had  been  monopolized  by  Time, 

God  holdeth  all  things  in  survey 

That  mock  our  human  sense  of  Right, 
And  to  our  Dark  vouchsafes  no  Light 

"  HlS    WILL    BE    DONE,"    IT    IS    HlS   WAY. 

146 


XCIII. 

When  loftier  human  impulse  drives 
The  spirit  of  a  flagrant  breed 
To  emulate  the  nobler  deed, 

Which,  yielding  scope  to  Reason,  thrives 

By  scholarship  enriched — at  odds 
With  all  Religion  fable-trussed, 
And  Christian  Deities,  adust, 

Oblivioned  with  the  Vedic  Gods — 

Science  no  longer  held  as  foe 
To  Faith,  but  mighty  to  avert 
From  patient  Truth  the  deadly  hurt 

That  will  from  shrewd  ecclesiarchs  flow ; 

Behold  unveiling  radiance  play 
Around  the  mysteries  hidden  long, 
While  earth,  rejoicing,  hails  with  song 

The  dawning  of  the  promised  day. 

H7 


XCIV. 

Then  onward — for  all  coming  time, 
To  march  as  an  enfranchised  host, 
Retrieving  epochs  grimed  and  lost 

In  sloughs  of  sacerdotal  slime. 

Avenging  generations,  thrust 
To  outer-darkness,  where  abort 
Horrors  unmatched,  and  ages  wrought 

To  forms  of  rapine,  crime  and  lust, 

Through  an  ecclesiastic  thrall, 
To  buttress  ignorance  designed, 
Despoil  the  masses,  curse  mankind, 

And  push  great  nations  to  their  fall : 

The  race  no  longer  foul  in  plight, 

Blund'ring  through  creedal-bogs,  in  quest 
Of  righteous  paths,  the  priests  suggest, 

Misled  by  "ignis-fatuus"  light ; 

148 


And  Reason's  rays  nor  dimmed  nor  quenched 
In  the  mephitic  fogs  of  Faith, 
With  God  no  more  a  goblin-wraith, 

But  in  all  hearts  as  Love  intrenched  ; 

And  credent  man  not  prone  to  lapse 
To  planes  of  pessimist  distrust, 
For  Spirit  will  transcend  his  dust, 

With  Heaven  no  more  a  "GREAT  PERHAPS." 


xcv. 

Then  will  the  soul  achieve  desire 
Concordant  with  the  height  it  seeks, 
Of  which  each  true  Apostle  speaks 

With  Pentecostal  tongue  of  fire. 

Then  will  Hope's  fond  Utopias  seem 
No  phantom  fallacies  of  sight, 
But  facts  of  palpable  delight, 

And  Life  no  vain  Alnaschar-dream. 

149 


For  ignorance  will  ebb,  and  mark, 
On  shore-lines  of  recessions  past, 
Where  all  its  faiths,  in  ruins  vast, 

Gods,  Cults  and  Creeds,  lie  dead  and  stark. 

The  new-born  century  ablaze 

With  knowledge,  Superstitions  show 
That  leprous-pale,  corpse-candle  glow, 

Seen  through  a  swamp's  miasmic  haze. 


XCVI. 

Prophets  of  God,  were  your  lips  sealed, 

Victims  of  Kabalistic  spell 

That  baffled  speech,  and  could  not  tell 
The  wondrous  truths  which  He  revealed  ? 

What  is  it  that  our  Faith  demands 
In  biblic  babblings  of  your  race  ? 
Of  Godlike  token  no  more  trace 

Than  footsteps  in  the  simoomed-sarids. 

150 


The  paths  that  Argosies  have  trod 
O'er  liquid  cragginess  of  seas, 
Reveal  as  much  of  track,  as  these 

The  trace  of  a  Revealing  God. 

Beshrew  the  gospel's  vile  pretence, 
For  logic  makes  conviction  sure  : 
All  God-inspired  literature 

Records  of  Priestcraft  insolence. 


Of  Heavenly  Father  not  a  scheme, 
This  fiction  of  Salvation-Plan, 
Devised  to  stultify  the  man, 

The  world  astound,  and  God  blaspheme, 

But  master-stroke  of  that  shrewd  guild, 
With  which  to  make  mankind  its  slave, 
From  cradled  childhood  to  the  grave  ; 

In  lies  of  its  invention  drilled. 


XCVII. 

Deluded  man  has  been  misled 
To  his  dishonor,  shame  and  ruth, 
By  yielding  faith  to  bold  untruth  : 

A  Mythos  misinterpreted. 

Man  has  not  fallen  /  but  progressed 
Through  vast  sequential-cells  of  life  ; 
Through  aeons  of  zoetic  strife, 

Till  as  a  Christ  He  stood  confessed. 

The  Gnostic-Man  /  of  peerless  breed  ! 
So  god-like  in  his  human  grade, 
That  noblest  manhood  has  been  made  ; 

From  such  a  model,  lapsed  indeed. 

But  not  through  Adam's  mythic  fall, 
But  his  divinest  tenure  killed 
By  this  Hierophantic  guild, 

And  its  debasing  bastard-thrall. 

152 


XCVIII. 

Christ,  as  a  grand-ideal,  then 
Might  claim  allegiency,  but  now 
Should  we  to  limitations  bow 

Of  half-developed  times  and  men  ? 

With  vile  patristic  forgeries  scored, 
All  chronicles  of  Him  appear, 
And  legends  of  His  earth-career 

Impugned  by  a  puissant  fraud. 

Yet  souls  evolving  on  the  plan 
Of  purest  Spiritism's  facts, 
Will  index  what  the  mythos  lacks 

In  symbolizing  ideal  man. 

As  fuller  glows  the  glorious  morn 

Of  a  New  Faith,  old  Creeds  are  spurned 
In  obloquy,  and  on  them  turned 

Flash-lights  of  intellectual  scorn. 

153 


XCIX. 

Religions  by  assumptions  braced 

Give  no  finality  to  creeds, 

But  "  proven  facts"  are  what  man  needs — 
Faith  on  " absolute  knowledge  based'' 

The  enigma  of  our  being,  we 

Had  not  the  faculties  to  solve  ; 

Now,  Death,  we  know,  does  not  involve 
The  Spirit's  immortality. 

Such  truth  The  New  Religion  gives  ; 
There  is  no  Death  !  the  immortal  soul 
From  carnate  bonds  escapes  control, 

And  in  eternal  progress  lives  ; 

A  Pharos  on  that  mystic  sea, 
O'er  which  Imagination  sailed, 
Yet  ne'er  till  now  one  light  availed, 

Beaconing  Life's  continuity. 

154 


c. 

Though  headstones,  blotched  with  weathered  rust 
As  weary,  holding  up,  unread, 
The  records  of  th'  oblivioned  dead, 

Leaning  o'er  uncohering  dust, 

Seem  with  a  solemn  lesson  fraught, 
Which  to  the  sorrowing  spirit  saith  : 
Behold  the  omnipotence  of  Death  ! 

Which  bringeth  all  things  unto  naught, 

The  husk  of  the  soul's  house,  at  best, 

To  swift  decay  predestinate, 

Its  Tenant's — a  chimera's  fate  ; 
Its  immortality — a  jest ; 

Though  aching  heart,  too  pained  with  grief, 
To  war  with  Doubt,  which  faith  assails, 
Throb  with  an  anguish  that  prevails 

In  pathos  of  a  lost  belief ; 

155 


Naught,  from  that  form  to  coffin-clod, 
Can  perish  utterly,  which  shares 
Cosmic  existence,  and  thus  bears 

The  impress  of  the  Living  God. 

There's  nothing  of  which  Science  treats 
That  knows  annihilation — none 
From  Energy  and  Motion  won 

That  back  to  nothingness  escheats. 


CI. 

Let  marvellous  types  all  doubt  disperse  ! 
Behold  one  fact  sublimely  taught : 
The  elemental  atoms  wrought 

To  a  Majestic  Universe  ! 

Think  not  that  those  involved  with  thee 
Are  lost ;  taking  thy  form  again, 
Etherealized,  they  still  remain 

Thy  Spirits  everlastingly. 

156 


And  though  in  testing  Life's  brief  time 
The  carnal  must  in  earth  attend 
Corruption's  waste,  at  last  to  end 

Bone-phosphate  and  a  little  lime, 

Yet,  if  the  tree,  the  bulb,  the  flower, 

Earth-planted,  thence  draw  bloom  and  scent, 
Such  fruit  and  leafy  wonderment, 

Think'st  thou  the  grave  owns  no  like  dower, 

New  life  potentially  to  bring 

From  whence  such  undreamed  forces  lurk, 

And  Evolution's  functions  work 

.  _•• 

For  every  God-established  thing  ? 

Let  human  hearts  with  hope  be  rife, 

For  from  the  dead — why  not  from  them  ? — 
Come  mystic  growth,  miraculous  stem 

And  radix  of  Immortal  Life  ? 


157 


CIt 

Regardless  of  the  gravestone  moss, 
Thy  kindred  whisper  from  the  spot — 
That  bond,  though  seeming  loosed,  is  not 

The  kinship  of  eternal  loss — 

Mere  earthy  sensuousness,  the  sum 

Of  all  such  gross  vitalities. 

What  proves  its  dissolution,  frees 
Force-germinal  of  Life-to-Come. 

The  Alter-ego  lieth  there 

By  that  remove,  from  carnal  woes 
Absolved  ;  the  Primal  Spirit  rose 

To  Endless  Life — the  Grave's  despair  ! 

Its  mouldering  cheeks  no  tears  have  pearled, 
No  pang  in  heart,  no  grief,  no  sigh. 
Its  patient  dust  unchallenged  by 

The  clamor  of  the  work-day  world. 

158 


cm. 

Factitious  death  the  Truth  belied ! 
Consigned  to  ashy  lifelessness 
The  carnal  was — yet  ne'ertheless — 

There  is  no  death  !  WE  NEVER  DIED  ! 

Our  vital  spirits  ever  near 

To  thy  gross  earthinesses  bring 

A  solace  for  thy  suffering, 
But,  poor  grieved  heart !  thou  canst  not  hear. 

That  change  transitional  bestows 
Radiant-mattered  life,  which  draws 
Godward,  through  Evolution's  laws, 

And  in  the  Spiritual  glows. 

In  rays  of  saintly  nimbus  dight, 
Death  can  no  more  its  life  betide, 
Immaculate  and  glorified 

In  its  own  palpitating  light. 

159 


CIV. 

Blissful  belief !  by  fact  assured  ! 

Impugning  happy  eyes  with  tears  ! 

Not  Fraud,  whose  near  two  thousand  years 
Of  evil  reign  has  been  endured. 

Persuasions  which  the  Truth  portend 
In  splendors  of  unearthly  tints, 
As  earth-verge  golden  sunset  hints 

Another  day  for  this  day's  end. 

Belated  Truth  !  yet  welcome  light ! 

That  cheers  life's  penitential  way, 

Corona  of  its  darkest  day  ! 
Aurora  of  its  sombrous  night ! 

Mindful  of  stinted  love  we  gave 
The  Mother,  Brother,  Sister,  Wife, 
When  these  were  vital  with  this  life, 

And  careless  of  the  certain  grave. 

160 


When  on  that  sombre  ebbing  tide 
That  flows  'twixt  Is  and  Is  TO  BE, 
And  fading  vision  fails  to  see 

Through  mists  that  fold  "  The  Other  Side"- 

Then  to  the  unveiled  sight  is  given 

The  loved  and  lost !     What  bliss  intense, 
O'erwhelms  the  franchised  Spirit's  sense ! 

THE  FIRST  PROGRESSIVE  STEP  IN  HEAVEN  ! 


Religion,  lacking  fact  like  this — 
A  Bridge  with  one  abutment-end, 
The  Other,  that  which  doth  impend 

Above  an  imminent  abyss, 

As  in  a  Phrase  not  well  made  out — 
An  endless-life  confirmed  by  this, 
That  Death's  a  mere  parenthesis 

Clearing  the  predicate  of  Doubt. 


161 


cv. 

Give  trust  in  God  a  wider  scope  ! 

For  life  ends  not  in  ended  breath, 

Grasp  that  great  Truth — and  make  not  death 
The  grim  finality  of  Hope. 

Nor  be  to  His  compassion  blind  : 

Our  days  with  charmed  delusions  fed, 
Through  Hope's  fair  Plaisance  ever  led, 

And  Death  pathetically  kind. 

If  worn  with  sorrow  tearless-deep, 
The  wretched  hold  it  not  in  dread, 
No  more  than  doth  the  pillowed  head, 

Nightly  rehearsing  it,  in  sleep. 

Counting  the  miseries  that  mar 

Some  lives  with  grief  and  pain  oppressed, 
How  grateful  seems  its  dreamless  rest ! 

What  anguish  were  Insomnia  ! 

162 


Oh  sad,  sad  Earth  !  can  Science  trace 
One,  'mid  the  shining  worlds  above, 
That  seems  less  worthy  of  God's  love 

Throughout  His  Seignory  of  Space  ! 

Where  still  mendacious  libel  lives 
To  poison  all  the  wells  of  Truth, 
Embittering  lives  of  age  and  youth  : 

Yet  trained  in  Crime  the  Borgia  thrives. 


CVI. 

There  is  no  "word  of  God,"  save  facts 
Inscribed  in  Nature's  marvellous  tomes ; 
Through  these  all  "  Revelation"  comes, 

And  Science,  as  exponent,  acts. 

Through  these  God  speaks ;  no  priest  intrudes 
In  cringings  bent ;  no  homage  feigned  ; 
No  aid  in  having  facts  explained  ; 

No  cassock  twaddling  platitudes. 

163 


Behold  "  God's  Word  :"  Great  Primer  Type  ! 

Proclaims  inexorable  fact ! 

Not  theorems  which  Priests  extract, 
As  Sodom-fruit,  from  growths  unripe. 

HE  cares  for  Bibles  not  a  whit, 

Nor  Shasters,  Vedas,  Alcorans, 

Nor  any  Testament  of  man's  ; 
His  Nature's  truths  are  "  Holy  Writ." 

There  read  divinest  Verity  ! 

There  Truth  the  Living  God  reveals ; 

His  Power  proves,  confirms  and  seals 
His  cognizance  of  Sovereignty. 


CVII. 

Only  through  Science  can  mankind 

Towards  knowledge  of  the  God  advance ; 
And  not  by  theoretic  chance 

The  esoteric  mystery  find. 

164 


On  its  serene,  unvapored  heights, 
Though  no  Mosaic  thunder  roars, 
God  welcomes  wistful  man,  and  Laws 

That  are  Eternal  Truths,  indites. 

Not  from  ''thick  darkness,  fire,  nor  cloud" 
Communeth  God  with  tribes  of  men, 
Nor  writes  on  stone  with  finger-pen, 

Nor  with  a  "  mighty  voice  "  speaks  loud  ; 

But,  in  the  gentlest  whisperings,  low 
Utters  to  Reason  and  the  Soul 
Wisdom  not  found  'neath  cowl  and  stole 

Nor  typed  in  Gospel  folio. 

With  no  Apocrypha  in  sooth  ! 
And  we  can  lap  our  souls  in  ease 
In  touch  with  Eternal  Verities, 

The  sacro-sanctities  of  truth, 

Throughout  His  Universe  bestowed, 
In  idiom  terse  :  their  meaning  lies 
Clear  to  the  searching  soul  and  wise 

God's  Imprimatur  of  the  Code. 

165 


CVIII. 

True  priests  and  prophets  there  are  found, 
Who  palter  not  with  fact,  to  please 
Bigots  nor  Sects  nor  Holy  Sees, 

But  reverently  "  God's  Word  "  expound. 

With  Books  of  Truth  the  world  He  fills, 
Star-typed  in  volumes  of  the  Sky  ! 
On  laminated  rocks  that  lie 

Script  on  the  everlasting  hills, 

In  wondrous  parl  of  Sun  and  Earth, 
Moving  in  stately  progress,  through 
The  glittering  empire  of  the  blue, 

Zoned  in  a  constellated  girth. 

The  panoramic  westward  trend — 
That  congregated  Suns  rehearse, 
With  Universe  on  Universe  ; 

Remote  Creations  without  end. 

166 


Worlds  in  measureless  depths  of  space 
Moving  to  music  Spirits  hear, 
And  God-ordained  for  every  sphere, 

For  countless  systems,  room  and  place  ; 

Beheld  through  no  sect-dungeon-bars 
The  awed  and  impressed  mortal  reads 
God's  manual,  as  the  planet  speeds 

Through  Night's  vast  solitude  of  stars — 

All  garrulous  of  Him  ;  and  so 
By  no  fraud-revelation  ruled, 
Be  not  by  Sects  so  grossly  fooled, 

AND  LET  THE  FETISH  BIBLE  GO. 


CIX. 

From  tablets  of  the  mind  'twere  best 
To  have  ITS  tutelage  erased, 
And  hold  cerebral  context,  graced 

As  TRUTH'S  GOD-WRITTEN  PALIMPSEST. 

167 


There's  more  of  God  in  weed  and  briar, 
More  of  His  voice  in  whispering  leaves, 
More  of  His  love  in  Autumn  sheaves, 

Than  in  its  fabled  text  entire. 

There's  more  of  God  in  kindly  balm 
Of  loving  ministry  to  grief, 
Than  found  in  searching  every  leaf 

Forming  the  covin  Gospel  sham. 

Sun-lighted  leas,  or  storm-torn  crags, 
Anthem  of  Ocean,  song  of  Brook, 
Speak  more  of  Him  than  monkish  book, 

Inked  o'er  with  lies  on  pulp  of  rags. 

Or  scenic  splendors  of  the  night, 
With  stars  and  galaxy  aglow, 
The  sibilant  hush  of  Earth  below 

Awed  in  the  palpitating  light ; 

The  Forest  Fane,  its  dim  defiles, 

Groined  gothic-like  with  arching  boughs, 
The  aromatic  dusk  and  drowse 

Pervading  all  its  minster-aisles ; 

168 


Temple  of  mystic  God  more  meet ; 
O'er  altars  leafy  baldachin 
It's  mellowed  sunlight,  holier  than 

The  chandler's  tallow  counterfeit, 

Glooming  a  famed  basilica, 

Where  gaudy  superflux  of  show 
Insults  the  Want  and  kneeling  Woe, 

And  God  far-off — so  very  far  ! 

Yet  man  can  not  conceive  as  fact 
That  all  that's  seen  or  is  to  see 
An  " always  has  been,  and  to  be" 

Apart  from  a  creative  act. 

And  not  the  hexaemeron  fad, 

Which  makes  ONE  day  in  every  seven 
A  quack-proprietary  Heaven 

For  every  sanctimonious  Cad. 


169 


ex. 

Abyssmal  mysteries  are  these  ! 

The  onward  and  the  backward  way 
Of  endless  progress — "  every  day 

Conflux  of  two  Eternities." 


Far  better  'twere  that  we  should  praise 
And  honor  antique  faith  forlorn, 
The  sanscrit-pagan  creeds  outworn, 

The  gospels  of  long-vanished  days — 

Vyasa  Legend,  Hindoo  Ved, 

Bhagavad-Geeta-Song — with  these 
The  Zenda-Vesta  of  Parsees, 

Th'  inspired  script  of  gods  long  dead  ; 

Or  to  Gotama  Buddha  pray 

Who  in  the  Holy  Bo-Tree's  shade 
Seeking  Nirvana,  sat  and  said 

Om!  Om!    Om  !  Om  !  the  live-long  day- 

170 


Than  make  a  fetish  of  the  tome 
Belittling  God,  and  glozing  men, 
Compiled  by  none  knows  who,  or  when, 

Save  Gnostics  and  the  Sham  of  Rome  ; 

Beguiling-priest's  insensate  trash  ! 

Culled  from  Akkadian  myth,  and  made 
As  "  Holy  Writ"  to  masquerade, 

Serving  as  orthodoxal  hash, 

Wherewith  to  nourish  fools !  and  thence 
Drawing  the  means  of  sumptuous  style 
From  witless  dupes,  whom  they  beguile, 

Degenerates,  dwarfed  to  impotence, 

Lead  lotus-eating  lives,  sufficed 

With  all  contentments  earth  can  give, 
Act  lordly,  princely  parts,  and  live 

The  bold  antitheses  of  Christ. 

The  wine  of  sense  drank  to  the  lees 
Till  morbid  grown  in  its  excess, 
All  things  become  a  weariness, 

Save  Power,  Wealth  and  life-long  ease  ; 

171 


Regarding  Life  a  sensuous  feast 
For  all  to  revel  at,  like  swine, 
Not  Opportunity  Divine, 

For  man  to  abrogate  the  beast. 

While  Bigotry  all  progress  quells, 
Filling  the  land  with  zealous  dupes, 
Where  Scholar  to  the  Dullard  stoops ; 

And  Learning  wears  the  cap-and-bells. 


CXI. 

Are  surpliced  frauds  to  dwell  at  ease, 
Enlightened  Nations  as  their  tools, 
And  earth  continue  breeding  fools 

Of  measureless  credulities  ? 

How  long  to  us  Time's  cycles  seem, 
Which  are,  in  sight  of  God,  a  day  ! 
This  wrong  cannot  endure  alway ; 

We  cannot  know  His  Wisdom's  scheme. 

172 


The  life-time  of  a  lie,  in  sooth, 
Seems  endless  to  the  finite  man, 
And  yet  how  very  brief  a  span 

In  the  Eternity  of  Truth  ! 

How  strange  that  Freemen  cannot  see 
This  subtle  power's  insidious  trend  ; 
Nor  rise  in  righteous  wrath,  and  end 

Its  Despotism  of  dupery  ! 

Its  secret  watchfulness  alert, 

With  ever  stealthy  grasp,  to  clutch 
The  Talisman  it  covets  much, 

Which  gained,  were  Freedom's  deadly  hurt. 


CXII. 

Dear  Land  !  the  School's  thy  talisman, 
The  magian-wand  that  round  thee  draws 
The  magic  circle  of  thy  cause, 

Guarding  thy  Freedom  in  its  span, 

173 


And  'gainst  all  shapes  of  Demonism, 
All  reason-killing  spawn  of  Hell, 
A  potent  necromantic  spell, 

With  stalwart  force  of  exorcism. 

Keep  it  thy  amulet  and  shield  ! 
For  in  constricting  stress  of  creed, 
Freedom  is  surely  doomed  to  bleed, 

Her  fate  ordained,  confirmed  and  sealed. 

Strangle  the  Python  ere  its  coil, 
Compressing  human  culture  more, 
Recalls  the  ''darkest  age"  of  yore, 

And  Saxon-virtues  prove  its  spoil. 


CXIII. 

Beshrew  a  priest's  inveterate  greed  ! 

Rend  warp  and  woof  of  web-spun  frauds 
Disprize  the  altar's  tinsel  gauds, 

Scorning  the  sacerdotal  breed. 

174 


Dispel  chimeras  !     Let  all  eyes 

Behold  with  vision  purged,  uncloaked, 
The  hideous  phantoms,  priest-evoked, 

Standing  revealed  :  Impostures  !  Lies  / 

Of  Charity  avoid  the  loss  ! 
Let  it  thy  every  act  pervade, 
A  form  of  Love  that  God  has  made 

The  Universe's  binding  force. 

Let  no  mere  Faith  thy  rule  debauch, 
Sanctioning  dogmas  ;  nor  yet  blind 
The  imperial  faculty  of  mind ; 

Placing  in  Reason's  hand  the  torch. 


CXIV. 

From  all  contaminations  freed, 
Naught  to  emasculate  thy  might, 
Then  wilt  thou,  eminent  in  light, 

Illumine  "all  the  world  indeed  ;" 

175 


And  in  that  splendor  shed  afar, 

A  glow  by  altruism  given, 

Before  the  wondering  worlds  of  Heaven 
Earth  rolls  no  more  so  sad  a  star. 

Thy  glories  counting  manifold, 

By  peoples  joyed  with  happy  days  ; 
Who  jubilant,  their  voices  raise, 

Till  to  the  stars  acclaim  is  rolled. 

From  zone  to  zone  the  song  will  run, 
While,  as  the  anthemed-chorus  swells, 
Melodious  conclave  of  the  bells 

Peal  their  responsive  antiphon. 

For  all  the  steepled-tongues  will  chime 
Carillon  to  the  cadenced  chant : 
A  blitheful  sound  reverberant 

Throughout  the  ringing  reach  of  Time. 

And  through  the  trumpet-coil  of  fame 
The  ransomed  brotherhoods,  o'erjoyed, 
Blow  praise  abroad  ;  earth  still  uncloyed 

With  iteration  of  thy  name. 

176 


cxv. 

Dear  Land  !  unparagoned  in  worth, 
The  pride  of  every  patriot's  heart, 
The  refuge  of  the  wronged  thou  art, 

A  Peoples  rule  !  the  hope  of  earth. 

Unto  thy  inspirations  true, 

Tread  fearlessly  the  path  of  Right, 
Made  clear  by  Wisdom's  guiding  light, 

And  counciled  by  the  wisest  few, 

From  Arctic  to  Antarctic  snow, 
And  where  the  tropic-girdled  earth 
Glows  in  an  endless  summer-birth, 

The  echo  of  thy  fame  will  go, 

Till  only  by  earth's  bournes  defined, 
With  hate  for  every  form  of  wrong  ; 
Foe  of  the  arbitrary  strong, 

Thy  ^Egis  bucklers  all  mankind. 

177 


And  where  thy  banner  floats  unfurled, 
Its  stars,  as  one  in  myth  of  old, 
Will  warn  the  shepherds  of  her  fold 

Where  Freedom's  cradled  in  the  world. 

The  earth  no  more  condemned  to  mourn 
The  inhumanities  of  men  : 
Nations  as  Christs  in  advent,  then 

The  VERY  GOD  OF  PEACE  were  born. 

Examples,  linked  with  precept,  must 
Relax  the  Despot's  brutal  grasp  ; 
The  fetters  of  the  slave  unclasp, 

Or  roll  unworthy  thrones  in  dust. 


CXVI. 

Be  not,  as  Propagandist,  weak, 

But  firm  of  purpose,  strong  in  strife, 
For  in  the  swarming  mob  of  life 

There  is  no  freedom  for  the  meek. 

178 


Boldly  asserting  manhood's  rights, 
No  virile  force  on  shadows  spent ; 
Reason  no  longer  impotent ; 

Free  to  dispute  the  Right  of  Might. 

Firm  in  revolt  of  priest-pretence, 
Tainted  with  guile  and  low  desire, 
Who  as  the  guides  to  God  aspire, 

While  wallowing  in  the  cess  of  sense. 

Unbiased  by  corrupt  appeal 

Through  selfish  greed  in  statesman-guise 

Or  partisan  majorities, 
Where  private  gain  mocks  public  weal; 

By  stainless  purpose  ever  led, 

In  righting  wrongs  made  manifest, 
Towards  Honor  be  thy  steps  addressed — 

Honor  and  Glory  wooed  and  wed. 


179 


CXVII. 

Thou  art  the  Chosen  land  where  worth 
And  wisdom  will  establish  sway, 
Scourging  all  hoary  wrongs  away, 

And  all  the  crimes  of  feudal  birth; 

Where  man,  in  scorn  of  cleric  rods, 
Will  yet  turn  Churches  into  Schools, 
When  FACT  and  NOT  ASSUMPTION  rules 

Those  shrines  of  misbegotten  Gods; 

And  changed  in  later  times  to  be, 

With  all  their  ruck  of  Rite  and  Creed 
(Warped  trappings  of  the  priestly  breed), 

The  Junk-Shops  of  Theology. 

And  Science'  guiding  light  appears, 

And  man,  sustained  by  Truths,  not  Hopes, 
No  longer  onward  blindly  gropes, 

Seeking  his  God  through  grief  and  fears, 

180 


Nor  by  invented  facts  allured, 

Which  Dupes  accept,  but  knowledge  spurns  ; 

To  THAT  as  to  the  Godhead  turns, 
Finding  Eternal  Life  assured  ; 

Not  harried  by  the  silly  fake, 
In  making  man,  God  was  at  loss 
How  otherwise  than  on  the  Cross, 

To  expiate  His  huge  mistake. 


CXVIII. 

Mankind's  enfranchisement  thy  goal, 

Into  Life's  tragic-drama  go  ! 

Act  well  thy  part,  it  seems  as  though 
God  had  rehearsed  thee  for  that  rdle. 

Uphold  the  speech  that  frees  the  mind, 
Enslaved  by  faith  in  worthless  creeds, 
Make  views  clear-visioned  for  all  needs, 

And  thus  free  both  the  bond  and  blind. 

181 


Scorning  the  fictions  of  a  sect, 
And  groveling  faith's  credulities, 
Wipe  off  the  dust  from  callous  knees, 

And  let  true  manhood  stand  erect. 


In  fetishism,  nevermore, 

Searching  to  find,  with  false  desire, 

Evolving  Deity  from  mire, 
Truth's  holy  form  from  mythic  lore. 

Braving  sectarian  wrath  and  ban, 
Till  culture  has  the  world  released 
From  Rule  of  Prelate,  Pope  and  Priest- 
Mere  euphemisms  of  Charlatan. 

And  dogmas  of  all  Holy  Sees, 
All  fictions,  Superstition-bred, 
Lie  like  the  strangled  pythons  dead 

Beside  the  cradled  Hercules. 


182 


CXIX. 

Avoid  the  curse  of  Church-ruled  lands, 
Lest,  in  some  not-far-distant  hour, 
Thy  grave  prove  but  a  step  to  Power, 

Made  gradient  by  prelatic  hands. 

For  thy  predestined  fate  may  be, 
In  fostering  Hierarchal  lust, 
That  thou  wilt  grovel  in  the  dust 

Of  darkness  and  credulity, 

And  swarming  ignorance  o'erwhelm 
Thy  proud  embattled  Ship-of-State, 
And  wreck  it,  through  a  Jesuit  hate, 

Though  Freedom's  hand  were  on  the  helm. 

And  to  the  patriot's  sight  appear 
Her  mournful  loving  eyes  downcast, 
Leaving  her  golden  age  at  last, 

Sad  foot-prints  of  a  grieved  Astrsea. 

183 


cxx. 

Be  pure  in  purpose,  broad  in  plan, 
And  with  unfaltering  step  advance 
On  that  high  plane  of  circumstance, 

That  makes  for  brotherhood  of  man. 

For  every  race  is  kin  to  thee  ; 

Lighten  the  cross  thy  brother  bears, 
And,  with  a  sympathy  that  wears 

The  impress  of  Divinity, 

Aid  Famine  with  thy  bounteous  hands, 
Succor  the  struggling  and  distressed, 
Raise  up  the  fallen  and  oppressed 

At  home,  and  even  in  distant  lands. 


Among  the  foremost  hold  thy  place, 
To  aid,  enlighten  and  redress  ; 
Exemplar  of  all  nobleness, 

'Mong  men  the  Archetypal  race. 

184 


And  arbitrate  thy  wrongs,  and  so 
Avoid  the  crime  of  warring  hosts, 
Be  thou  a  Perikles  who  boasts — 

"  None  for  my  acts  wears  weeds  of  woe  "  ! 

Winning  a  name  that  earth  delights ; 

Of  the  world's  welfare — truest  friend  ; 

To  wrong  subdue  and  right  defend, 
The  Champion  of  all  human  rights. 

Till  in  all  hearts  thy  cult  abounds, 
Effacing  evils,  ranks  and  castes ; 
And  with  potential  vigor  blasts 

The  perpetuity  of  Crowns. 


CXXI. 

That  all  may  glory  in  thy  worth, 
Magnetic  glamour  that  invites 
Nations  to  be  thy  proselytes, 

And  heirs  of  tributary  earth. 

185 


For  Freedom's  lustral  floods  set  free, 
Absterse  the  infamies  that  lurk 
In  Minster,  Temple,  Church  and  Kirk- 

The  Augeas  of  Feudality  ; 

And  in  marauding  flow  immersed, 
Sceptre,  Tiara,  Crown  and  Stole, 
In  a  detested  litter  roll — 

The  symbols  of  a  thrall  accursed. 


186 


EPILOGUE. 
CXXII. 

Perchance  thy  fame,  evoking  hate, 
Tempts  envious  Powers  to  prevail 
Against  thee — and  Armadas  sail, 

Noting  thy  peace-allegiant  state  ; 

While  Britain,  proud  pelagic  Queen, 
Beholding  from  her  moated  shores 
Their  "  leather  and  prunella"  wars  ; 

Knowing  her  kin,  looks  on,  serene 

Though  her  dread  symbol  at  her  gates, 
Regardant !  but  with  bristling  mane 
Horrent  in  anger,  not  in  vain, 

Daunting  the  allied  foemen,  waits. 

187 


If  e'er  confederate  force  beset 

Her  Power,  and  aid  become  a  need, 
Be  not  outdone  in  helpful  deed ; 

Do  not  forget !     Do  not  forget ! 

Unmindful  of  past  taunting  ways, 
Be  kin  and  kind,  and  let  her  see 
How  slight  an  air  of  sympathy 

Brings  up  a  smouldering  love,  ablaze. 

And,  ever  coupled  with  thy  name, 

"  Peace  and  good  will  to  men  " — to  be 
With  universal  Liberty, 

Thy  pass-words  to  Eternal  Fame. 


188 


L'ENVOI. 
CXXIII. 

I  hold  in  homage  due  the  one 

Who,  with  a  mind  of  subtlest  thought, 
And  tongue  of  fearless  utterance,  sought 

By  Truth — not  statements  fiction-spun — 

To  free  a  purblind  class,  enslaved 
By  Churchdom — he  who  pitying  trod 
Their  imbecile  beliefs,  rough-shod, 

And  their  mendacious  anger  braved. 

Thy  work  on  earth  I  hold  divine, 
Thou  gentlest,  noblest  man  of  man  ! 
My  soul  is  with  thee  now  as  then ; 

And  loving  hands  stretched  forth  for  thine. 

189 


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